Armed with More Than Knowledge: an Autoethnographic

ARMED WITH MORE THAN KNOWLEDGE: AN AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC

EXPLORATION OF GUN CULTURE

DARCI M. GRAVES

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY Department of Teaching and Learning

DECEMBER 2019

To the Faculty of Washington State University:

The members of the Committee appointed to examine the dissertation of DARCI M.

GRAVES find it satisfactory and recommend that it be accepted.

Pamela Bettis, Ph.D., Co-Chair

Ashley Boyd, Ph.D., Co-Chair

Susan Finley, Ph.D.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I would like to take a moment to thank the people who have supported me in completing my doctoral coursework and writing my dissertation. First, I would like to thank the members of my doctoral committee. Dr. Pamela Bettis, whom I first met prior to applying to this doctoral program. Thank you for supporting me since day one and seeing me through to the very end of writing this dissertation. You have pushed me to be a better academic and a stronger writer.

Thanks to Dr. Susan Finley for inspiring me to step outside my comfort zone and integrate an arts-based approach into my academic work. Thank you to Dr. Ashley Boyd for stepping in and supporting me through the final and most difficult stages of writing a dissertation. Each of these faculty members have taught me to see the value in my own work and for this I am grateful.

I would also like to thank my husband, Dan, without whom this dissertation would not be possible. Thank you, Dan, for supporting me since I was an undergraduate – and then putting up with me through graduate school and then my doctoral program. Thank you for taking on all the extra work at home and making sure I never quit. I would also like to thank my children, Alma,

Hadrian, and Theodore. Each of them inspires me to be a better person and gave me a sense of purpose in finishing my work.

Lastly, I would like to thank the friends and colleagues who have supported me through this process. Lauralea Edwards, my writing partner and friend who encouraged me to keep going. Erika Offerdahl, a friend and supporter who always lent an ear and great advice. Manee

Moua, my colleague and confidant. Matthew Jeffries, a friend who was always willing to edit my work and give feedback even on short notice. Without these people I could have never completed this work.

ARMED WITH MORE THAN KNOWLEDGE: AN AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC

EXPLORATION OF GUNS ON CAMPUS

Abstract

by Darci M. Graves, Ph.D. Washington State University December 2019

Co-Chairs: Pamela Bettis and Ashley Boyd

The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the author’s experiences with campus concealed carry and gun culture. The author employs methods of autoethnography to highlight the ways in which her lived experiences interact with gun culture in the United States of

America. Vignettes included in this work examine the author’s: attendance at a campus-wide training on how to survive an active shooter; involvement in a concealed carry permit course; and experience with a student implying possession of a gun inside an academic classroom.

Through the lens of intersectional feminism, the author deconstructs the ways in which gender, race, class, and ability impact her experiences and analyzes how these constructs are represented within gun culture. Significant findings discussed are: the culturally constructed idea of the

‘good guy with a gun’; the ways in which gun culture positions women as inherently vulnerable in order to support their claim that guns are empowering; the methods by which gun culture utilizes fear to encourage gun use; and the ways guns in academic spaces impact power structures. Future directions for research include further exploration of the implications of guns

v in college classrooms and examining the numbers of students who choose to practice concealed carry on campus.

Key words: Gun culture, Guns on Campus, Campus Concealed Carry, School Violence

TABLE OF CONTENTS Page

ACKNOWLEDGMENT ...... iii

ABSTRACT ...... iv

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION ...... 1

Contextualizing/Defining the Problem: Guns on Campus ...... 3

Statement of the Question Driving this Study:...... 5

Overview of the Study ...... 6

Methodology of the Study...... 9

Ethical Considerations ...... 10

Conclusion ...... 12

CHAPTER TWO: INTERSECTIONAL FEMINISM AS A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

FOR RESEARCH ...... 14

Troubling Notions of Equality ...... 15

Intersectional Feminism ...... 21

Theoretical Origins ...... 22

Double Jeopardy, Triple Jeopardy, and Multiple Jeopardies...... 27

CRC Interlocking Systems of Oppression...... 29

Intersectionality...... 30

The Outsider Within ...... 31

The Personal is Political...... 31

Arriving at the Third Wave...... 32

Intersectional Feminism Defined ...... 33

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Critiques of Intersectional Feminism...... 35

My Positionality and Intersectional Feminism...... 37

Utilizing Intersectional Feminism to Analyze Guns and Gun Culture ...... 38

CHAPTER THREE: CONTEXTUALIZING CAMPUS CONCEALED CARRY AS A PART

OF AMERICAN GUN CULTURE ...... 41

The Rise of School Shootings in America ...... 42

A Brief History of the Movement to Bring Concealed Carry to a School Near You...... 47

The Movement to Bring Concealed Carry to a Campus Near You ...... 49

Academic Freedom and Implications for Students and Faculty ...... 51

Student and Faculty Perceptions of Guns on Campus ...... 53

Who is carrying weapons on campus? ...... 55

Gun Culture ...... 56

Exploring the Intersection of Guns, Race, and Socioeconomic Status ...... 58

The Great Equalizer ...... 60

Conclusion ...... 62

CHAPTER FOUR: METHODOLOGY OF THE STUDY ...... 64

Critical Autoethnography Defined ...... 65

Fieldwork ...... 75

Crafting a Narrative ...... 80

Validity and Reliability ...... 83

Ethical Considerations/Positionality...... 83

CHAPTER FIVE: ANALYSIS ...... 86

Armed with More than Knowledge ...... 87

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Narrating an Incident ...... 89

Situating a Story in Time and Place ...... 90

Dismantling Presumed Power Hierarchies in the Classroom ...... 91

A Teacher Changed ...... 93

The Relationship Between Surviving an Active Shooter and Concealed Carry ...... 97

Surviving an Active Shooter ...... 98

Learning through Writing ...... 104

The Ever-Increasing Availability of Guns ...... 106

The Relationship Between Survival and Winning ...... 107

Codifying the Individual’s Responsibility to Fight ...... 108

Constructing Victimhood through Fear-Based Curriculum ...... 110

Ninety-Eight Rounds ...... 113

What the Hell Happened at the Gun Range? ...... 118

The Relationship Between Inherent Vulnerability and the Empowered Woman ...... 120

Conclusion ...... 131

CHAPTER SIX: CONCLUSION ...... 134

Over-view of Findings and Highlight Key Points from Findings ...... 135

Scope of Study...... 138

A Story Left Untold ...... 139

Implications for Future Research ...... 142

Final Thoughts ...... 143

References ...... 147

Dedication

This work is dedicated to

my parents

Denton and Tracy.

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

I am standing in the copy room at my children’s school cutting wrapping paper into six by six-inch squares for a first-grade class project. The room is located directly behind the main office and because I volunteer here every week nobody is ever surprised by my presence. I have two kids at this school and one of them is profoundly intellectually and physically disabled.

Often her therapists, para professionals, or teachers will seek me out to check in. Because of this,

I am not surprised when the principal pops into the room to chat with me, but I am a little taken back that he wants to give me a heads up the school is about to have an active shooter drill. Like a fire drill, he says, but to prepare the kids for the possibility of an active shooter in the building.

Because I am very interested in this topic, I respond by asking questions. I learn that these drills are conducted at least twice per year, sometimes more. The students are taught to shelter inside their classrooms after barricading the doors. They learn to stay away from windows and to sit as silently as possible. Children who happen to be in the hallway when the drill occurs are locked out of their classrooms and must wait for a trusted adult to come for them. I try not to think about what will happen to the kid who needed a bathroom break and ends up alone and terrified in the hallway. I imagine my 6-year-old son in his kindergarten classroom, huddled in the reading corner of the room where he typically cuddles on soft bean bag chairs with picture books. I know he will be confused and scared and I make a mental note that we will need to talk about this when he comes home from school. I am not sure he understands what a ‘shooter’ is? Next, I imagine my daughter. Her intellectual disability means she does not have the capacity to understand concepts such as ‘hide’ or ‘be quiet.’ In my imagination she is humming loudly and making other stimming sounds while her aids try without success to keep her quiet. When I start to wonder if they love her enough to shield her body from a barrage of bullets, I physically shake

2 my head to clear the thoughts. The principal invites me to step into the hallway during the drill – he thinks I will find the quiet, empty halls to be of interest. Instead, I find the whole situation deeply disturbing. I fight the urge to take my children out of the building and away from the threat of impending death. I believe the need for children to participate in active shooter drills at school is everything that is wrong with the world and I wonder, how have we arrived at this point?

I am interested in the active shooter drill for a variety of reasons. First, and foremost, as a parent it deeply concerns me that my children are participating in them, and I wonder what this means for their psychological development. It bothers me to think we live in a world where children being murdered at school is a legitimate social concern. Second, as an academic I have a professional interest in the topic of active shooters. I teach at a small four-year state college in a rural community located 30 miles south of where my children attend school. My commute to work takes me into a state where the government has passed legislation making it legal to practice concealed carry on college campuses (Legislature of the State of Idaho, 2014).

Concealed carry is a term generically used to refer to the practice of carrying a loaded weapon on your person but concealed in a manner that makes the weapon invisible to the naked eye. The history of concealed carry policies nation-wide will be discussed at length in chapter three.

Campus concealed carry legislation was passed in Idaho in 2014, which happened to coincide with my first year as a tenure-track faculty member. I developed a keen interest in campus concealed carry policies after a racially charged incident in one of my classes left me feeling concerned that some of my students might be practicing concealed carry. Upon further investigation, I learned I was not at liberty to ask students if they were carrying a weapon, I was not allowed to make any attempt to separate students from their weapons, and I could not

3 mandate that my classrooms or office be designated gun-free spaces. As a Quaker and an active pacifist, I have a moral objection to the idea of violence being met with more violence. As a woman, the idea that people are practicing concealed carry on campus makes me feel less safe.

Finally, as an educator, I am professionally concerned that the presence of guns in my classrooms might affect student learning and classroom culture.

Contextualizing/Defining the Problem: Guns on Campus

All these concerns prompted me to explore the literature and research about guns on campus in hopes of better understanding of the implications of campus concealed carry. I was disappointed by the lack of information available. Guns, as it turns out, are a significantly under- studied component of our culture. This is concerning given the extensive nature of gun violence that occurs in this country. Every year for the past ten years there has been an average of 30,000- gun deaths and every year for the last twenty years an average of 36 mass murders. (Johnson,

2017). While only 5% of the world’s children live in the United States, our children comprise

87% of children aged 0-14 who are killed by firearms each year (Towers, Gomez-Lievano,

Khan, Mubayi, & Castillo-Chavez, 2015). The national conversation about guns in schools started in 1999, when thirteen students and one teacher were murdered at Columbine High

School in Colorado. The entire nation was distressed by the senseless murders and the assailants, both students at the school, became household names. ‘Columbine’ became synonymous with school shooting, and this became a watershed moment in which our entire culture began to shift in response to the feeling that our children are not safe at school. Since the shootings at

Columbine happened, there have been several other high-profile school shootings. The murder of thirty-three college students at Virginia Tech in 2007 and the murder of twenty first-grade children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 are only two examples. Although these

4 examples have become a part of the collective cultural conscious, they represent a very small percentage of school shootings. Between 1997 and 2013, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun

Violence estimates 220 school shootings took place (Towers et. al, 2015). I often think about what it means for the children who have grown up in a Post-Columbine world, where the numbers of school shootings have been increasing annually (Towers et. al, 2015). When I started this dissertation, the children at Stoneman Douglas High School had not yet been murdered and neither had the students at University of North Carolina. At some point, it became clear to me that I would never stop updating this work to account for new school shootings until the very moment it was submitted to my committee.

Given the prevalence of gun violence in American culture, and the lack of information that specifically examines the implications of campus concealed carry, I wanted to learn more about guns in a broader cultural context. I learned about the historic context of the legislative campaign to make concealed carry more accessible nationwide (Brady Center to Prevent Gun

Violence, 2007; Fox & DeLateur, 2014; Grossman & Lee, 2008). I looked at the information available regarding who is most likely to concealed carry where legal (Bouffard, Nobles, Wells,

& Cavanaugh, 2012; Lewis, LoCurto, Brown, Stowell, Maryman, Mcnair, Ojeda, & Siwierka,

2015; Miller, Hemenway & Wechsler, 1999). I explored the cultural implications of guns, and the ways in which guns are used to represent or reproduce normative cultural ideologies

(Carlson, 2013, 2015; Hollander, 2001; Patten, Thomas, & Viotti, 2013; Stroud, 2012). Much of this information is reviewed in detail later in this work. I found myself deeply interested in the frequently used pro-gun argument that asserts carrying a gun is inherently empowering for women. The NRA makes this argument in the way they market guns to women (Carlson, 2013;

Blair & Hyatt, 1995). Politicians frame campus concealed carry as a women’s rights issue

(Lopes, 2015). Some politicians even claim that if more women practiced concealed carry, we as a country could fix the nation-wide epidemic of sexual violence on college campuses (Lopes,

2015).

Statement of the Question Driving this Study:

All this information led me to ask my initial research questions: 1) How have I experienced the implementation of campus concealed carry from my position as a female faculty member working on a campus where concealed carry has been legalized?2) How are my experiences influenced by the broader pro-gun culture of the United States of America?

Although my initial intention was to explore my experiences with campus concealed carry policies from my position as a faculty member on a campus, utilizing an autoethnographic approach soon led me to expand my exploration outside of campus spaces. Autoethnographic research allows the researcher to tell their own story, situated in broader cultural constructs, and for the purpose of making meaning out of lived experiences (Boylorne & Orbe, 2014; Bochner &

Ellis, 2016;). To fully understand guns on campus, I had to spend time exploring the role and implications of guns from a broader social perspective. This led me to participate in various aspects of gun culture that were not rooted on campus, but rather reflective of a variety of social spaces including concealed carry permit courses, gun ranges, gun shows, gun stores, and even the police station which I visited in order to apply for an enhanced concealed carry permit. I also began to experience gun culture through social networking and the internet – following pro-gun blogs, watching NRA TV for women, and participating in online discussion forums about the role of guns in society. I even began to interact with guns from a consumer’s perspective, shopping online websites that market concealed carry holsters and other clothing items to women. By interacting with gun culture in a variety of ways, my initial research question was

6 expanded beyond the scope of simply exploring campus concealed carry policies. Ultimately my research question was extended to ask the following: 1) How have I experienced the implementation of campus concealed carry from my position as a female faculty member working on a campus where concealed carry has been legalized? 2)How have I as a white, able- bodied, cisgender, middle-class, woman experienced gun culture or gun-friendly spaces? How have these experiences shaped my understanding of gun culture in the United States of America.

3) What is the relationship between my personal experiences as a participant in gun culture and

American gun culture in general?

Overview of the Study

In order to make meaning of my lived experiences, I engaged in a multi-step process.

Although I provide a brief overview of this process here, a detailed description will be provided in chapter four. Boylorne and Orbe (2014) define autoethnography as “cultural analysis through personal narrative” (p. 17). Ultimately this work provides in depth analysis of different aspects of gun culture as I have experienced and presented them here. The first step in this process was to reflect on lived experiences I had already experienced in relationship to campus concealed carry, and then create additional opportunities to participate in the various aspects of gun-culture I thought were important to learn more about. Through ethnographic field immersion I took both a basic and an enhanced concealed carry permit course; visited a gun range; took my family to a gun show; obtained a concealed carry permit; participated in a debate about guns; and participated in a training on how to survive an active shooter. These experiences in the field allowed me to expand my knowledge of the cultural context in which I had experienced the implementation of a campus concealed carry, and simultaneously created more experiences ripe for analysis. Throughout my time in the field, I took extensive field notes to keep a record of my

7 experiences. The second step of my process was to turn my field notes/experiences into autoethnographic narratives that convey my stories to the reader. Narratives were constructed in a way that would allow the reader to observe my experience while also drawing their own connections to cultural constructs. Over the course of this research, I wrote a number of narratives that are not presented here. In the final stages of this work, I interacted with my narratives as a type of data ripe for analysis and interpretation. The narratives presented in this work were selected for two reasons. First, as individual narratives I find them to be compelling representations of gun culture. Second, I felt they worked together as a whole to create a narrative arc that encompassed my experience with gun culture. This allows me to make connections between my personal lived experiences and the broader social structures of gun culture.

The relevant field experiences that are presented in this work include attending a campus- wide training on how to survive an active shooter and attending both a basic and enhanced concealed carry permit course. My experience in the enhanced concealed carry permit course is represented by my time spent at the gun-range where I was required to fire ninety-eight rounds of ammunition. Additionally, I share a narrative about the moment it occurred to me that students might be carrying concealed weapons in my classes, and I felt afraid for my student’s safety.

This lived experience was a driving factor in my interest in this topic. It is presented in this work not only because of its relevance to my research, but because this information also provides context on my positionality to the role of guns in society. All narratives were written with the intention of providing myself, and simultaneously the reader, an opportunity to make meaning of my lived experiences and provide a better understanding of guns, gun culture, and campus concealed carry (Boylorne & Orbe, 2014).

This work is presented here in the following chapters. Chapter two introduces the reader to intersectional feminism as a theoretical framework through which I have chosen to make meaning of my lived experiences. This chapter troubles the notion of equality and instead asserts that intersectional feminism is more concerned with notions of equity (hooks, 1984; hooks

2015). This disrupts the idea that feminism is concerned with equality of the sexes, and in doing so creates a space to critically examine the interconnected functions of patriarchy, capitalism, and white supremacy in the perpetuation of women’s oppression as seen within the context of gun culture (Beal, 2008; Lorde, 1984). This chapter draws heavily from the work of intersectional feminist theorists and academics such as Hill-Collins (1986), Moraga and

Anzaldua (2015), Crenshaw (1989, 1991), Davis (1983) and Anthias and Yuval-Davis (1983) to define intersectional feminism and explore the scope of its potential for theoretical application.

Additionally, this chapter functionally outlines the ways in which intersectional feminist theory will be utilized in the scope of my work as an analytic tool for understanding the relationship between my personal field experiences studying campus concealed carry policies and gun culture, and the broader cultural constructs that impacted them (Cho, Crenshaw & McCall, 2013;

Cooper, 2016). Heavy emphasis is placed on utilizing intersectional feminist theory as a tool for deconstructing power dynamics and relationships in social structures (Ferguson, 2017). Chapter three provides a review of the relevant literature on campus concealed carry and gun culture.

This information provides the reader with a foundational framework for thinking about the topics of campus concealed carry and gun culture. This chapter also utilizes an intersectional feminist framework to draw attention to some of the missing components of the available literature on guns. For example, there is very little relevant literature examining the role of white supremacy in gun culture and very often the whiteness of mass shooters is overlooked or ignored.

In chapter four, I will define critical autoethnography and make an argument for my interpretation of critical autoethnography as an intersectional feminist approach to research.

Additionally, I provide a broad overview of the research design of this dissertation and the steps

I took to collect observational and participatory data in the field. I will discuss the writing process by which I have crafted the narrative stories you will read in the next chapter and explain how I anchored them in a broader cultural context. I will also explore my thought process for selecting narratives to be included or excluded from this work. This chapter will also explore the ethical implications of research on campus concealed carry, and how I chose to navigate several complex ethical questions.

Chapter five presents a series of narratives about my personal lived experiences with guns on campus, gun culture, and campus concealed carry. The stories are presented in italics to assist the reader in discerning the narrative from the method and analysis. Following each narrative is an analysis that explicitly connects the narrative to a broader cultural construct. Each analysis will also incorporate a description of the writing process and provide a detailed description of both how and why the story was constructed. Lastly, chapter six will offer a conclusion of the work, and detail how this work can be utilized to transform the conversation about campus concealed carry. This chapter will also outline next steps for my research on campus concealed carry.

Methodology of the Study

Although the methodology of this work will be detailed in chapter four, I would like to speak briefly to the over-all methodology of this research study. One of the key reasons I am utilizing an autoethnographic approach to this topic is my interest in writing narratives. There is something implicitly powerful in the telling and re-telling of stories. As a methodology,

10 autoethnography allows the researcher to make sense of their lived experiences by situating them within broader cultural constructs (Boylorne & Orbe, 2014). Autoethnography also allows the audience to make sense of these broader cultural constructs by thinking about them through the lens of the lived experiences of the author. Thus, the art of storytelling is critical in creating an autoethnographic piece that allows the author to create these connections for the reader.

Critical autoethnography is rooted in first person experiences and narrative and as such there is no expectation that my personal experiences can or should be projected onto other groups of people. However, autoethnography also seeks to root personal experiences in broader cultural constructs and as a result makes connections between personal and collective experiences. The narratives provided in this dissertation are unique to my experience as a white, cis-gender, able-bodied, middle-class, female academic on a concealed carry campus. At the same time, my stories can at times be indicative of the broader cultural construction of women as inherently vulnerable members of society. Thus, it is up to the reader to decide how they want to interact with, interpret, and act upon the knowledge presented in this work. This work will speak to different people in different ways. This work seeks to create a relationship between the author and the reader, and that relationship can take any number of forms. There is no assumption that the work will have one singular or universal interpretation. I am less concerned with universal truths, and more interested in understanding life experiences. Critical autoethnography as a methodology, and the way in which I have utilized this methodology for this work, will be discuss in further detail in chapter four.

Ethical Considerations

Although questions of ethics are integrated throughout this work, I wanted to say a few things here about the ethical considerations of undertaking a critical autoethnography on a topic

11 that is both political and personal. In the early stages of this work I spent a great deal of time talking through my plans with both my colleagues and my dissertation committee members. One colleague was deeply disturbed by the ethical implications of my plans to obtain a concealed carry permit and practice concealed carry. We were sitting in her office, and she leaned across her desk, smacking her hand against the surface for emphasis, as she told me she did not believe guns belonged on campus, and she would not tolerate any person bringing guns into her office. If

I was going to bring a gun onto campus, she was emphatic that I would not be welcome in her space. I could see that she was upset, so I told her that I would be happy to respect her wishes.

However, her concerns ignored an important aspect of the conversation. Anybody with a permit could, legally, bring a gun into her office and so long as they didn’t brandish the weapon or tell her it was there. She couldn’t do anything about it. Even if she wanted to create an internal policy designating her office to be a gun free space, the institution would not support it, and she would be violating state law.

This conversation highlighted the sensitive nature of a research project that involves the procurement and use of weapons. It is impossible to participate in the owning and firing of weapons without creating the possibility that others will be impacted by my choices. In fact, my colleague was not the only person in my life who was alarmed by my sudden interest in owning and carrying a weapon. My husband also expressed concerns. With three small children in our home, the decision to own a handgun held far-reaching implications for the personal health and well-being of my children and family. Ultimately, I decided not to purchase a weapon or practice concealed carry. Although the voices of resistance in my personal life played a key role in making this decision, it was the student survivors of Stoneman Douglas who ultimately made up my mind. Just after receiving a concealed carry permit the mass murder at Stoneman Douglas

High School in Florida occurred—and in the aftermath there was a shift in the nature of the national conversation about guns. The voices of child activists and survivors of gun violence, in addition to my family and friends, influenced my decision to refrain from practicing concealed carry. I will discuss this decision in further detail later in this work. Other ethical considerations pertinent to the writing of an autoethnography include IRB oversight and relational ethics – both topics that will be covered in depth in chapter four.

Conclusion

In the aftermath of the shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018, student survivors founded the March for Our Lives movement to advocate for legislation that would eliminate school violence. In 2019, they put out a public service announcement that initially depicted a group of adult employees taking an active shooter training. In the video, the facilitator informs the group they have brought in an expert to teach them about survival, and then a young girl walks into room. This elementary school-aged child proceeds to offer training to the adults on how best they can survive an active shooter. At the end of the public service announcement the young girl sings a song that one of her teachers taught her class with the intention of helping them remember their active shooter survival skills. Softly, she sings:

“Lock down, lock down, let’s all hide.

Lock the doors and stay inside.

Crouch on down.

Don’t make a sound.

And don’t cry, or you’ll be found.

The PSA is aptly titled ‘Generation Lockdown’ and highlights the ways in which our culture has shifted in a way that has normalized the threat of gun-violence as part of our education system.

Underneath the video, the March for Our Lives website asserts, “A child’s most important lesson shouldn’t be how to survive” (http://marchforourlives.com/generation-lockdown/). Yet here we are. Generation Lockdown, or the post-Columbine generation, represents the students who have either personally survived a school shooting, or watched as their same-aged peers have been gunned down at public schools. These are the same students who are now entering our institutions of higher education and finding that the college campus is not exempt from the threat of an active shooter. The time for a conversation about the role of guns in our classrooms is now.

The following work represents a culmination of years of experience and interaction with guns, gun culture, and campus concealed carry. It is my intention to contribute to existing knowledge about campus concealed carry and gun culture.

CHAPTER TWO: INTERSECTIONAL FEMINISM AS A THEORETICAL

FRAMEWORK FOR RESEARCH

I have always been interested in better understanding social structures of power. Growing up girl in a rural community where traditional gender roles were heavily enforced propelled me to question the systems that I often found myself struggling against. As a result, I have identified as a feminist my entire life, even before I had the language to describe my beliefs. As an adult, I continue working to develop the education, insight, and knowledge to deconstruct social institutions and power hierarchies. Consequently, the ways in which I have defined, and experienced feminism have significantly evolved over time. This has happened in response to both personal and academic exposure and experiences. As a social worker and activist, I have often been deeply situated in feminism as a practice as opposed to feminism as a theory. This dissertation has challenged me to critically reflect upon my relationship to feminism, explore where my personal understandings of feminist theories have been inadequate, and examine how my identity as a white woman has shaped this process. As I work towards merging my identities as a feminist and a scholar, this work represents my first attempt at integrating theory into research practice, and fully articulating my personal position on what it means to engage with feminism in the context of academic research.

A fundamental misunderstanding of feminism is that there is one universal brand of feminism predicated on a unified feminist theory. Although feminism does have several underlying tenets that tend to be consistent, there is a multitude of ways in which feminist theory can be interpreted. For example, feminist theory in general argues that women are treated as inferior members of society; however, there are several ways in which one might explain this treatment. In this chapter I will focus on defining intersectional feminism and situate myself as

15 an intersectional feminist within the spectrum of feminist philosophies (hooks, 2015; Cooper,

2016). I will trouble the notion of equality as a fundamental tenet of feminism and elaborate on the difference between equality and equity (hooks, 2015). I will discuss the historical context of intersectional feminism as a foundation for framing the theoretical applications of intersectional feminist theory (Beal, 2008; Crenshaw, 1989; Crenshaw, 1991; King, 1988; Hill-Collins, 1998).

I will further outline how intersectional feminist theory can be utilized as an analytic tool to understand the relationship between my personal field experiences studying campus concealed carry policies and the broader cultural constructs that impacted them (Cho, Crenshaw & McCall,

2013; Cooper, 2016). Because I am utilizing a feminist ideology to deconstruct various components of gun culture, I will also discuss the feminist perspective on patriarchy and hegemonic masculinity (Firestone & Koedt, 1970; Tong & Botts, 2018). Both social constructs play a significant role in any greater discussion of guns or gun culture. I will connect my work to the feminist pursuit of gender justice (hooks, 2015) and examine how my positionality influences my work and my engagement with feminist theory (Cooper, 2016). This chapter will briefly touch on the feminist belief that the personal is political and lay a foundation for understanding how this idea has influenced my choice of writing autoethnography, which will be further discussed in the analysis chapter of this text. Lastly, I will briefly discuss contemporary critiques of feminist theory. This chapter will establish the fundamental components of intersectional feminism and create a theoretical foundation for understanding how this theoretical framework informs autoethnography as a research methodology.

Troubling Notions of Equality

Simone de Beauvoir (1949) described women as the “second sex” arguing the social construction of woman is always created in relationship to man. According to Beauvoir (1949),

16 sex is different than gender – the latter being entirely socially constructed in a manner that would perpetuate the oppression of women. This premise, that there is no fundamental or inherent difference between man and woman, is integral to feminist theory. Much of feminist theory rests on the belief that gender is a social construct, and challenging the social construct is the work of feminist activists. Answering the questions of why and how these social constructs exist is the pursuit of feminist theorists. Ferguson (2017) writes “feminist theory has generally followed

Beauvoir’s insight that we are not born, but rather we become, women” (p. 171). She further states that feminist theory gives us a lens through which we can understand, and ultimately interrupt, this socialized process of becoming women (Ferguson, 2017). Disrupting the socially driven constructs of inequality between the sexes is a fundamental premise of feminist theory.

How this theory translates into practice depends on a variety of factors. Contrary to popular belief, not all feminism is the same, and there is a wide spectrum of feminist theories (Friedman,

Metelerkamp, & Posel, 1987; Gray & Boddy, 2010). Examples of diverse interpretations of feminist theory and activism are widely represented in the literature but can also be observed in mainstream representations of feminism.

In 2014, pop culture icon Beyoncé walked onto stage at the Video Music Awards (VMA) with the word FEMINIST emblazoned on a screen behind her. As she walked, viewers could hear writer/activist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie defining a feminist as “a person who believes in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes” (Beyoncé Online, 2018). Beyoncé later publicly stated she integrated the word feminist into her show because people have a fundamental misunderstanding of the word. She wanted to use her performance to create dialogue and education about feminism (Blair, 2016). When critics of Beyoncé argued that her reliance on hyper-sexuality was fundamentally antithetical to feminism, Adichie was quick to

17 publicly defend Beyoncé’s right to call herself a feminist. Despite this, Adichie also publicly refused to align herself with what she referred to as Beyoncé’s brand of feminism (Kuo, 2016). I highlight this moment in pop culture here because it exemplifies the difficulty in finding consensus on what constitutes feminism. Although this moment in time brought a great deal of attention to feminism as a movement and a theory, it ultimately offered an overly simplistic representation of both by relying on a single representation of feminism.

One major critique of the idea that feminism is about creating equality between the sexes challenges the attainability of equality by rejecting the notion that all men have equal levels of privilege. hooks (1984) strategically disrupts the idea of male equality by asking “since men are not equals in white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal structure, which men do we want to be equal to” (p.19)? hooks examines the way privilege and power exist on a spectrum, and depending on the complex collision of an individual’s identity and positionality they may have more or less. This de-emphasis on equality positions feminism as a social movement that has

“shifted to an all-out effort to create gender justice” (hooks, 2015, p. 3) and bring an “end to patriarchy and sexism” (hooks, 2015, p. 4). This highlights the difference between fighting for equality as opposed to equity or justice. Equality refers to the idea that it is possible to allocate resources and opportunities in a way that everybody has the same amount of access. Activists who ascribe to an ideology of equality tend to focus on legal channels as a means of ensuring equal access. Equity foregrounds issues of justice and acknowledges that social structures rely on inequitable distribution of resources to function. Thus, equity is more focused on dismantling systems of oppression. If structural and institutional inequities exist within groups as well as between groups, we can achieve neither equity nor justice.

This speaks to one component of feminism that generally demonstrates consensus, the belief that patriarchy and hegemonic masculinity are two fundamental components of culture that perpetuate inequities. Marinucci (2010) defines patriarchy as “a social structure that grants priority to that which is male or masculine over that which is female or feminine” (p.88). A key component of the social construction of patriarchy is the socially enforced expectation that men participate in the performance of hegemonic masculinity. This refers to the “normative ideology that to be a man is to be dominant in society and that the subordination of women is required to maintain such power” (Smith, Parrott, Swartout, &`, p. 160). Further, Smith et al. (2015) contend that “to demonstrate hegemonic masculinity, men are expected to adhere to a strict set of prescribed masculine gender roles that work to promote male dominance through subordination and overall distrust of femininity” (p.160). An intersectional perspective notes that masculinity preferences white, heterosexual, cis-gendered masculinity, but ultimately that all men benefit in some ways from patriarchal institutions. Despite this, many men are also harmed by patriarchal institutions and the pressures to perform hegemonic masculinity. Thus, it is fair to say that feminism is interested in deconstructing power hierarchies not just for the benefit of women, but also for the benefit of men. In the contemporary era it is widely acknowledged that for feminism as a movement to address issues of equity and justice the movement must embrace issues and people that have not historically been considered women’s issues or women, respectively.

Intersectional feminism has evolved to integrate a variety of additional movements into both theory and activism – advocating for the rights of queer populations, immigrant populations, disabled populations, and a variety of additional groups. This includes deconstructing the reductionist binary of man/woman and contemporary feminism must embrace the needs and rights of the transgender community.

Ferguson (2017) speaks to this fundamental misunderstanding of feminism – the assumption that women’s issues are the only issues, or that women’s issues only affect women.

Ferguson (2017) positions her work as intersectional when she writes “feminist theory is not only about women, although it is that; it is about the world, engaged through critical intersectional perspectives” (p. 270). When the scope of feminism is expanded to understand the importance of advocating for human rights, equity, and justice, it becomes evident that it is not men who are the enemy of feminism. Rather feminists are fighting against broader social systems that perpetuate inequities among those who have power and those who do not. For example, an intersectional approach to feminism considers the implications of the neoliberal economy for women and other marginalized groups. hooks (1994) calls this a “politicized revolutionary feminist movement that has as its central agenda the transformation of society” (p. 71). Ferguson (2017) echoes this sentiment when she writes “feminist theory is a political as well as an intellectual enterprise. It is rooted in and responsible to movements for equality, freedom, and justice” (p. 171). As I will discuss at length in later sections of this paper, intersectional feminism acknowledges that the advancement of women in society requires a simultaneous advancement of other marginalized populations.

Frances Beal (2008) examines another problematic aspect of defining feminism merely as equality of the sexes by highlighting the role of capitalism in patriarchal society. Exploring the role of women in a capitalist economy she notes that women “represent a surplus labor supply, the control of which is absolutely necessary to the profitable functioning of capitalism (Beal,

2008, p. 170). The idea that we can legislate equality of economic opportunity between men and women ignores the underlying problem of living in a capitalist economy that relies on the exploitation of women and other marginalized groups to provide low wage labor. To change the

20 system, she asserts that individuals cannot address race, gender, and economic opportunity as separate social problems. Instead, she writes “Each individual must develop a high political consciousness in order to understand how this System enslaves us all and what actions we must take to bring about its total destruction” (Beal, 2008, p. 176). Lorde (1984) echoes these concerns regarding the capitalist underpinnings of patriarchy, writing

In a society where the good is defined in terms of profit rather than in terms of human

need, there must always be some group of people who, through systematized oppression,

can be made to feel surplus, to occupy the place of the dehumanized inferior. Within this

society, that group is made of up Black and Third World people, working-class people,

older people, and women” (p. 114)

As every aspect of our society becomes increasingly commodified, the worth of individuals becomes more intimately connected to their position within neoliberal economies. Intersectional feminism identifies that class is integral to understanding the position of women, and that class and race are often intimately connected (Davis, 1983; Beal, 2008).

When Beyoncé walked on stage at the Video Music Awards she was literally sparkling – dressed in a gold, sequin, leotard she did not disappoint the fans who love her over-the-top sense of fashion (Beyoncé Online). I bring her up again because Beyoncé highlights in so many ways the complexity of defining feminism. As a woman who self-identifies as a feminist, she publicly advocates a definition of feminism that relies on an assumption that equality is possible. In some ways, this is unsurprising as Beyoncé occupies a very specific position in society as an ultra- wealthy, excessively famous individual. This position ignores the reality that issues of class are often constructed in a way that codes Black as poor, and that her position as a wealthy woman might lend a different perspective on what it means to believe economic equality is attainable.

Despite this, her wealth does not insulate Beyoncé from experiencing racism. As a Black woman, critiques of the way Beyoncé embodies feminism are often filtered through a white supremacist lens that rely on racist caricatures of the hypersexuality of Black women.

In my own feminist education, I was often taught that equality of the sexes was the central agenda of the feminist movement. This is unsurprising given my position as a white woman, and the fact that most of my education came from white women who identified as second wave feminists. I will discuss my positionality more extensively later in this chapter.

Despite my formative introduction to feminism, and as I have highlighted in this section, equality is a problematic construct. Focusing on equality assumes that there is one group to whom we wish to be equal (hooks, 1994), ignores the economic forces of capitalism that require women’s subordination (Lorde, 1984; Beal, 2008) and fails to address issues of equity or justice (hooks,

1994). Intersectional feminism is a specific type of feminist theory that focuses on equity, thus addressing many of the problems created when feminism focuses on issues of equality. In this work I will utilize an intersectional approach to defining feminism. In the following sections of this chapter I will review the historical origins of intersectional feminism, define intersectional feminism, and discuss how I will utilize intersectional feminism within the scope of this work.

Intersectional Feminism

Women of color have long been advocating for a more nuanced understanding of oppression that examines the interconnectedness of race, gender, and ultimately other factors such as class, disability, or global positionality (King, 1988; Carastathis, 2016; Hill-Collins &

Bilge, 2016; Davis, 2008; Brah & Phoenix, 2004). By the time Crenshaw (1989, 1991) coined the phrase intersectionality, there was a long history of women of color discussing an intersectional approach to feminism. Sojourner Truth asked the question “A’n’t I a woman?’ in

1851 (Carastathis, 2016). Frances Beal (2008) used the phrase Double Jeopardy as early as 1970, and shortly thereafter the Third World Women’s Alliance made popular the phrase Triple

Jeopardy (Carastathis, 2016) to examine issues or racism, sexism, and imperialism. The

Combahee River Collective (CRC) (1978) and Patricia Hill-Collins talked about “interlocking systems of oppression” (CRC, 1978; Hill-Collins, 1986; Carastathis, 2016). In this section I will provide a brief overview of the evolution of intersectional feminism by highlighting some of the key documents that have contributed to the body of intersectional knowledge. This history is significant for understanding the modern-day applications of intersectional feminism.

Theoretical Origins

Intersectional feminist thinkers trace their documented origins to the nineteenth century when Sojourner Truth, a Black woman and slave, famously asked the question “A’n’t I a woman?” during a speech titled Woman’s Rights (Carastathis, 2016, p. 15). Truth was calling attention to the ways in which the lived experiences of white women were positioned as the dominant version of womanhood – thus ignoring the everyday realities of Black women held as slaves. Pheonix and Brah (2004) assert that Truth’s speech “powerfully challenges essentialist thinking that a particular category of woman is essentially this or essentially that (e.g. that women are necessarily weaker than men or that enslaved Black women were not real women)”

(p. 75). Other early activists challenged the centering of white women as well. Anna Julia

Cooper wrote about equality as both a woman problem and a race question (King, 1988;

Carastathis, 2016). Elise Johnson McDougald, Ida B. Wells, Maria Stewart, Sadie Tanner Mosell

Alexander, and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper are other activists credited with setting the precedent for understanding that institutional and structural oppression had components of both sexism and racism that impacted women of color in distinct ways (Combahee River Collective,

1978; Carastathis, 2016; Hill-Collins, 1986; Hill-Collins & Bilge, 2016). Wells and Harper are both notable for their emphasis on examining the brutality and violence directed at Black men and acknowledging that if this violence continued, it posed a serious threat to the potential for civil rights progress of all groups. (Hill-Collins, 1986).

In 1832, Black women founded the first anti-slavery society, and the women’s anti- slavery movement produced a series of powerful voices who “could not be caged by the violence of slavery even as they were violently marked by it” (Brah & Phoenix, 2004, p. 76). Truth, who was herself born a slave, advocated for both the freedom of slaves and the rights of women. She gave her famous speech in 1851. This is only three years after Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1848) published the Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions, which is often credited as the document that launched the feminist movement in the United States (Brah & Phoenix, 2004;

Gray & Boddy, 2010; Marinucci, 2010). The declaration outlined the ways in which women were not considered equal to men in both law and social expectations and served as a catalyst for the now-famous Seneca Falls Convention (Freedman, 2007). Unfortunately, the document was drafted by and for white women, and “Black women were conspicuous by their absence at the

Seneca Falls Anti-Slavery Convention of 1848 where the mainly middle-class white delegates debated the motion for women’s suffrage” (Brah & Phoenix, 2004, p. 76). At best the declaration assumed women of color had the same experiences as white women thus positioning ‘women’ as a monolithic category. At worst, the declaration failed to acknowledge the presence, needs, and voices of women of color. In many ways the emergence of Truth, a Black woman born into slavery, and Stanton, a middle-class white woman, highlights the development of two parallel feminist movements.

The history of white western feminism often obscures the emergence of intersectional and woman of color feminism and is frequently categorized into three, sometimes four, distinct

‘waves’ or periods of time. The first wave, often referred to as the suffragist movement, was predominantly concerned with white women’s equality through legal channels. Seeking legal acknowledgement that women were human beings with rights, and that women should be enfranchised or given the right to vote, were key components (Gray & Boddy, 2010). King

(1988) writes that the absence of Black women from the mainstream suffragist movement is unsurprising given that “it was routinely asserted that only one group might gain voting privileges – either Blacks, or women, that is Black men or white women” (p. 51). When women received the right to vote in 1920, Black women as well as Black men were still systematically disenfranchised through Jim Crow policies (Anderson, 2016). It was not until 1964 that Black women were granted the right to vote by the Voting Civil Rights Act. This highlights the ways in which white women were willing to sacrifice the needs of women of color to further the white feminist agenda.

Second wave white feminism emerged in the wake of WWII after white women, who had been encouraged to join the work force during the war, were told to return to the realm of home and family. Compared to the first wave, the second wave movement took a broader approach to understanding gender-based inequalities. When Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique

(1963), she gave voice to “the problem that has no name” (p. 57). Friedan (1963) explained:

The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women. It

was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the

middle of the twentieth century in the United States. Each suburban wife struggled with it

alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate

peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay

beside her husband at night – she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question –

“is this all?”” (Friedan, 1063, p. 57).

By giving voice to such a simple question, Friedan (1963) created a space for middle class white women in America to choose, publicly, that they wanted more opportunities in life. The most visible proponents of second wave feminism were white women who no longer wished to be relegated to the world of home and family (Gray & Boddy, 2010). As a result, many second wave activists placed emphasis on addressing inequalities in the home environment and questioning the gendered division of labor. In addition to this, the movement continued in the vein of first wave feminism by promoting equality through legal channels. Second wave white feminism advocated for laws that would protect women from discrimination in the work place and violence in the home with the promotion of an equal rights amendment (Gray & Boddy,

2010). Despite making significant gains for white women in their public and private lives, second wave white feminism failed to incorporate the voices of women of color activists

(Combahee River Collective, 1978). It is implicit in her writing that Friedan (1963) is only referencing middle-class white women as the ones who suffer from the problem that has no name. Beal (2008) points out that the problem that has no name simply does not translate to the experiences of women of color, writing:

It is idle dreaming to think of Black-women simply caring for their homes and children

like the middle-class white model. Most Black women have to work to help house, feed,

and clothe their families. Black women make up a substantial percentage of the Black

working force and that is true for the poorest Black family as well as the so-called

“middle-class” family” (Beal, 2008, p. 167).

This highlights the narrow focus of a movement predicated on the idea of more equal division of housework. This is particularly disturbing given that one outcome of second wave white feminism was to shift some of their less desirable labor onto women of color and working-class women (Lorde, 1984).

Throughout the second wave, women of color were actively creating spaces to engage in critical work and laying the foundations for a more intersectional approach to feminism that would become popularized and reproduced during the third wave. The Combahee River

Collective (1978) pointed out that “Black, other Third World, and working women have been involved in the feminist movement from its start, but both outside reactionary forces and racism and elitism within the movement itself have served to obscure our participation” (1978, page unknown). Audre Lorde (1984) writes that “Black feminism is not white feminism in Blackface.

Black women have particular and legitimate issues which affect our lives as Black women” (p.

60) and raised difficult questions regarding the racial make-up of the mainstream feminist movement, asking:

If white American feminist theory need not deal with the differences between us, and the

resulting difference in aspects of our oppressions, then what do you do with the fact that

the women who clean your houses and tend your children while you attend conferences

on feminist theory are, for the most part, poor and third world women? What is the theory

behind racist feminism” (Lorde, 1984, p. 112)?

Critiques of white feminist theory were abundant throughout the second wave as women of color were creating better ways of understanding oppression that did not exclude them. Marinucci

(2010) notes that “Alice Walker (1983) articulated womanism as alternative to the white, sometimes even racist, orientation of mainstream feminism” (p. 87). In that same year, Gloria

Anzaldua and Cheri Moraga (1983) published the first of several editions of This Bridge Called

My Back to give women of color a space to “create bridges of consciousness through the exploration, in print, of their diverse classes, cultures and sexualities” (Moraga & Anzaldua,

2015). Anzaldua (1987) wrote about the intersections of gender and race when she introduced her concept of neplanta, referring to the in-between space of her identities as a queer Chicana woman. Frances Beal (2008) originally published her work using the phrase “Double Jeopardy” in 1970. Crenshaw (1989, 1991) used the term “intersectionality” in examining complex legal issues and the Third World Women’s Alliance moved the conversation from double jeopardy to

“Triple Jeopardy.” Davis (1983) published her book Women, Race, and Class and Anthias &

Yuval-Davis (1983) challenged the idea of a universal sisterhood where all women have the same needs. These works contributed to what is now the foundation for intersectional feminist theory.

Double Jeopardy, Triple Jeopardy, and Multiple Jeopardies. Beal (2008) published her work Double Jeopardy: To be Black and Female in 1970. Her work examines the distinct experiences of Black women and other women of color. She takes time to specifically deconstruct how women of color interact with social institutions and power structures when compared to white women. For example, a hallmark feature of second wave white feminism was the fight for better access to birth control and the ability of women to obtain safe abortion care.

However, the movement largely ignored the intersections of race and class regarding family planning. Beal (2008) points out that rich white women were afforded protection by virtue of having money, which made safe abortion care accessible. “It is the poor Black and Puerto Rican woman who is at the mercy of the local butcher” (Beal, 2008, p. 173). In her work she strategically draws attention to the fact that white women feminists advocating for access to

28 abortion failed to incorporate the experiences and needs of women of color. Although her work was titled ‘double jeopardy’ which implied an examination of gender and sex, she also explored the role of capitalism in the oppression of women of color and third world women. Beal (2008) called for an alliance between these populations in fighting oppression and, like Lorde (1984) she directly calls out white women’s complacency in these systems. She writes: “If the white groups do not realize that they are in fact, fighting capitalism and racism, we do not have common bonds” (Beal, 2008, p. 174).

Beal was not alone in identifying non-Black women of color and third world women as allies to the emerging Black feminist movement. In 1970 the Black Women’s Alliance (BWA) changed their name to the Third World Women’s Alliance (TWWA) to better reflect the demographics of women engaged in their movement. (Carastathis, 2016). In this period the concept of double jeopardy was expanded to triple jeopardy which was actually more in line with the arguments being made by Beal (2008), who discussed gender, race, and class in her writing.

The TWWA began publishing a journal titled Triple Jeopardy: Racism, Imperialism, Sexism to showcase work that utilized what would later be called an intersectional approach (Crenshaw,

1989, 1991) to understanding what hooks (1984) refers to as white supremacist capitalist patriarchy (Carastathis, 2016).

King (1988) started utilizing the phrase multiple jeopardies in direct response to both double and triple jeopardy. Arguing that double and triple jeopardy were too simplistic or reductive, she instead posited that the concepts were interpreted as a “mathematical equation, racism plus sexism plus classism equals triple jeopardy” (King, 1988, p. 47). She further wrote that “such assertions ignore the fact that racism, sexism, and classism constitute three, interdependent control systems” (King, 1988, p. 47). She offered multiple jeopardy as a more

29 interactive model of understanding not only the various forms of oppression experienced by women of color, but also to examine the relationships between and among systematic and structural inequities. “In other words, the equivalent formulation is racism multiplied by sexism multiplied by classism” (King, 1988, p. 47). This shift towards a more interactive way of conceptualizing intersectional feminism allows for the critical analysis of identities beyond race/gender/class – subjectivities like sexual orientation, disability, immigration status, and gender identity can also be taken into account.

CRC Interlocking Systems of Oppression. The Combahee River Collective (CRC) was a group of Black feminists, aptly named in homage to action taken by Harriet Tubman to free slaves from the Combahee Ferry in 1863 (CRC, 1978). This throwback highlights the connection between Black women activists engaged in critique of second wave white feminism and the

Black women activists engaged in both the anti-slavery/pro-woman movements of earlier generations. The CRC celebrated this connection, writing “we find our origins in the historical reality of Afro-American women's continuous life-and-death struggle for survival and liberation”

(CRC, 1978, pg. unknown). The CRC was vocal in their critique of second wave feminism and the ways in which the needs and experiences of white women were positioned as both neutral and singular. The publication of the CRC Statement (1978) represents a substantial contribution to the theoretical underpinnings of intersectional feminism. The introduction articulates their position, stating:

we are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class

oppression, and see as our particular task the development of integrated analysis and

practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking. The

synthesis of these oppressions creates the conditions of our lives. As Black women we

see Black feminism as the logical political movement to combat the manifold and

simultaneous oppressions that all women of color face (CRC, 1979).

Intersectional thinking moved from an analysis of race/gender, to race/gender/class, and now to race/gender/class/sexual orientation. The CRC examined how all of these forms of oppression interconnected with each other for the benefit of a small group of society. They also acknowledged that to dismantle one requires the dismantling of all.

Intersectionality. Although it is Crenshaw who is most often credited with the foundation of intersectional theory, I have already outlined a variety of scholars who were doing intersectional work prior to and concurrently to Crenshaw (Beal, 2008; King, 1988; Carastathis,

2016). As a legal scholar, Crenshaw (1989, 1991) drew on the work of earlier intersectional thinkers to better understand the experience of Black women within the criminal justice system.

Simultaneously, she too critiqued mainstream feminism writing “contemporary feminist and antiracist discourses have failed to consider intersectional identities” (Crenshaw, 1991, p. 1242-

1245).

In her book, Intersectionality, Carastathis (2016) dedicates an entire chapter to examining the early work of Crenshaw. She argues it is not possible to have a comprehensive conversation about intersectional feminism without introducing an oft-overlooked component of Crenshaw’s

(1989) early writings on basement theory. In Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex:

A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist

Politics, Crenshaw (1989) writes an analogy of oppression that asks us to imagine all marginalized peoples stuck in the basement of a house. Rather than all oppressed groups existing equitably within the basement, they are stacked one group on top of another, one group standing on the shoulders of another group. The heads of the group on top would be touching the ceiling,

31 but there are limited opportunities for those people on top of the basement to escape through selective hatches in the floors. Those who occupy the bottom of the basement are Black women.

Crenshaw uses this analogy to lay out an argument that the true liberation of Black women would inevitably result in the liberation of all marginalized and oppressed populations. For Black women to be liberated would require the dismantling of all power hierarchies, and all groups would be de-facto beneficiaries of the equity of Black women. (Crenshaw, 1989)

The Outsider Within. The experiences of women of color were discussed further by several feminist theorists. Hill-Collins (1986) used a metaphor introduced by Audre Lorde’s

(1984) published essay collection Sister Outsider to discuss what she referred to as the “outsider within status” (p. 14) so often experienced by women of color. She detailed the ways in which

Black women, as opposed to Black men, have been given access to the world of middle-class whiteness in their capacity of housekeepers and nanny’s. Working in the homes of white families provided a certain insider status wherein they “experienced white power demystified – of knowing that it was not intellect, talent, or humanity of their employers that supported their superior status, but largely just the advantages of racism” (Hill-Collins, 1984, p. 14). Despite this knowledge, these women remained ‘outsiders’ who were not accepted wholly by the families they worked for. Hill-Collins (1986) argues that the outsider-within status uniquely positioned

Black women to examine the “interlocking nature of race, gender, and class in oppression” (p.

19).

The Personal is Political. Introduced by radical feminists in the sixties and seventies, the practice of consciousness raising asked women to come together in groups to share their stories of womanhood. Through this process “many women discovered that their supposedly individual experiences were not unique but widely shared by women of various backgrounds” (Tong &

Botts, 2018). Consciousness raising helped women understand their personal experiences within a collective cultural context and created a flash point for activism wherein the personal becomes political. Firestone & Koudt (1970) published a now-famous article The Personal is Political written by Carol Hansich, wherein she discussed the importance women’s collective story-telling as an inherently political action. The idea of the personal as political has become a hallmark feature of feminist ideologies. Although consciousness raising groups are not inherently intersectional in their approach, the underlying idea of women sharing stories can be seen throughout intersectional feminism. When Anzaldua and Moraga (2015) published This Bridge

Called My Back they were specifically creating a space for women of color to collectively share their stories, but the text has a decidedly political agenda. The Combahee River Collective was a women’s group who met with the specific purpose of cultivating a political agenda – but group membership was defined by commonality of experience. I will return to the idea of the personal as political in the methodology chapter of this text to further discuss the importance of the tenet as fundamental to engaging in feminist research.

Arriving at the Third Wave. By the time Rebecca Walker (1992) wrote “I am not a postfeminism feminist. I am the Third Wave” (Freeman, 2007, p. 401), the groundwork had already been put in place for a more nuanced and intersectional approach to feminist ideologies.

Thus, it is somewhat of a fallacy to say that the third wave feminism introduced racial critique of the second wave – the critiques were already there. Third wave, or contemporary feminism, is often associated with a more intersectional approach to understanding oppression, and an accompanying attempt to include the voices of women of color (Gray & Boddy, 2010). Despite this, it is important to remember that not all third wave feminism is intersectional and not all intersectional feminism is third wave.

Intersectional Feminism Defined

In the previous section I outlined a brief history of intersectional feminism and gave an overview of some of the most important theoretical contributions to the field. This history illustrates the dynamic nature of the theory. Intersectional feminism is rooted in the voices of women like Sojourner Truth, born into slavery, crying out against the injustices of Black women stripped of their womanhood by the slave system. Truth was among the first to point out that

‘women’ was not a universal construct by noting the role of race in how women were treated

(Carastathis, 2016). Building upon this, Davis (1983), Beal (2008), and King (1988) wrote about not only women and race but brought class into the conversation. Anzaldua (1987) incorporated her identity as queer into her writings about being a woman of color. More recently, Allison

Kafer (2013) integrated her identities as Queer and Disabled into her intersectional writing.

Thus, the history provides a clear illustration of the dynamic nature of intersectional feminism.

The underlying beauty of this theoretical understanding of the world is that its fluidity allows the theory to expand to the ever changing cultural, political, and economic world around us.

Intersectional feminism interrupts the idea that middle-class, cis-gendered, heterosexual, able- bodied white women’s experiences are universally representative of all women. Intersectionality intentionally de-centers the experiences of this narrowly defined group of women to create a more inclusive framework.

In 2009, Crenshaw, along with two other early contributors to intersectional theory, were interviewed for an edited anthology on intersectional feminism. When asked about how she came to intersectionality Crenshaw recounted her experiences of trying to create a more integrated faculty at Harvard Law School. She recalled a committee was developed specifically to look for candidates of color, and then another committee was formed to look for candidates who were

34 women. In the end, the committee looking for candidates of color presented all male candidates, and the committee looking for women presented exclusively white women. Women of color were lost in the mix – each committee assuming that women of color fell outside of their purview and should be the responsibility of the other committee (Berger & Guidroz, 2009). This example clearly illustrates the ways in Black women were left behind even as Black men and white women were given access to social progress.

Intersectional feminism disrupts binary constructions of identities and embraces an intentional deconstruction of the social constructions of gender, race, and class. This is done, in party, through the acknowledgment that “no account of oppression is true for all women in all situations all the time” (Gray & Boddy, 2010, p. 382). However, this is not to deny that women as a group can experience oppression and marginalization in similar ways. Intersectional feminism simply understands that if the only agenda of feminism is equality of the sexes, we will fail to account for the way race, gender, ability, economic status and other factors influence life experiences. Mayo (2015) posits intersectionality is “the notion that subjectivities are complex collisions of different histories, associations, and positions” (p.244) and as a concept “centralizes relationality even as it poses challenges about simultaneity, difference, and alliance” (p. 244).

Thus, intersectional theory allows us to fully articulate identities. However, the real power is that intersectional theory provides the tools to deconstruct institutional arrangements of power by understanding how power functions and challenging the mechanisms that enforce it (Cooper,

2016). Cooper (2016) writes

institutional power arrangements, rooted as they are in relations of domination and

subordination, confound and constrict the life possibilities of those who already live at

the intersection of certain identity categories, even as they elevate the possibilities of

those living at more legible (and privileged) points of intersection (p. unknown).

Intersectional feminism is the result of emotional and intellectual labor produced by women of color. As the theory has moved from margin to center, the underlying constructs of intersectional theory have expanded to include a multitude of marginalized and oppressed populations.

Critiques of Intersectional Feminism

Intersectional theory has proven to be incredibly popular and the phrase is often attached to work to lend credibility to the author. In an article titled Intersectionality as a Buzzword Davis

(2008) discusses the popularity of intersectional theory. She uses the term ‘buzzword’ intentionally after noting how often people use the phrase despite being “not at all certain what the concept meant” (p. 67). This sentiment is echoed by Crenshaw who has discussed both the popularity of the term, and the problematic ways in which intersectionality is sometimes used.

Referring to her contributions to the field, Crenshaw wrote “my own use of the term intersectionality was just a metaphor. I’m amazed at how it gets over and underused; sometimes I can’t even recognize it in the literature anymore” (Berger & Guidroz, 2009, p. 65). Nash (2016) discusses the idea that intersectionality should draw heavily on early texts as “intersectional originalism” (p. 9) which is a position she states, “make claims to power through assertions of close-reading that champions doctrinal faithfulness” (p.4) to the original Crenshaw (1989, 1991) articles. Nash (2016) further points out that even as intersectional theory has become integrated across academic disciplines, there has also been a significant push-back against intersectionality as “problematically identitarian and preoccupied with woundedness” (p.5). Carastathis (2016) organizes contemporary critiques of intersectional feminism into a total of eight categories. The

Scalar Critique, the Infinite Regress Critique, the Mutual Exclusion Critique, and the

Reinscription Critique take “issue with some or all of the purported analytic merits of the intersectionality paradigm” (Carastathis, 2018, p. 125). A second group of critiques, the Marxist

Critique, the New Materialist Critique, and the Assemblage Critique, examine the perceived reductive nature of intersectionality and explore its theoretical limitations (Carastathis, 2018).

The final category, which Carastathis (2018) refers to as the Post-Intersectional Critique “alleges that intersectionality is too simplistic a theory or too crude a metaphor to account for the complex phenomenon of subordination” (p. 126) and claims that there are better options for critiquing cultural power dynamics.

Although each of these critiques offer analysis of both the grounding and scope of intersectional theory, I would like to briefly focus on what Nash (2016) refers to as intersectional originalism. After acknowledging that many writers are laying claim to intersectional theories without adequate comprehension of what that means, Nash also argues that this problem can be remedied if one thoroughly engages with foundation texts. Through engagement and study, theorists can develop a full and comprehensive understanding of intersectional theory. I disagree with this point, as it assumes that intersectional theory lacks the ability to be adapted based on time and place. A close reading of early texts illustrates the ways in which intersectionality was transformed even before the term was being utilized. As I have already outlined, the earliest intersectional thinkers were focused on race and gender. Class was introduced as a third category of analysis, and as we have seen over time, intersectional analysis has since expanded to examine categories of (dis)ability, sexual orientation, gender identity, immigration status, and other aspects of a person’s identity (Beal, 2008; Moraga & Anzaldua, 2015, year; Hill-Collins, 1998;

King, 1988; Kafer, 2013). Although it is imperative to study original intersectional theories, I posit that intersectionality is an inherently flexible theoretical framework. It is fundamentally

37 focused on illustrating the complexities of identities. This does not discount that some identities experience oppression in greater or lesser degrees than other identities, rather it allows us to deconstruct the power hierarchies that support this process.

My Positionality and Intersectional Feminism

As a white woman who strives to disidentify with white feminism, it is important to articulate the various ways in which my identity affords me privilege while simultaneously contributing to my oppression. Intersectional feminism provides a theoretical framework for understanding how social constructions of power operate to create my positionality within the social hierarchies of power and privilege. In this work, I utilize intersectional feminism as a tool for exploring relationships of power throughout my experiences with campus concealed carry. I will discuss the different types of power relationships in the next section of this chapter, but first it is necessary for me to articulate the aspects of my identity that are most impacted by, and contribute to, these power dynamics.

As a white woman I possess white privilege. White privilege can be understood as unearned social privileges bestowed upon an individual merely by virtue of perceived racial identity. In the United States white privilege cannot be understood without considering our exhaustive history of white supremacy and the accompanying oppression of people of color

(Anderson, 2016). This history shapes the way I am able to navigate the world, and in many instances the way that the world receives me. Within the scope of this research project, white privilege has allowed me to participate in various components of gun culture with the explicit and implicit approval of those around me. This cannot be understated – as a white woman nobody questioned my motives for wanting to obtain a concealed carry permit, and at no point in

38 time did I feel that having a concealed carry permit, or a gun, would make me less safe around or a target of policing bodies.

In addition to white privilege, I possess a great deal of economic privilege. As a doctoral candidate and tenure track faculty member, I occupy what many would perceive as high-status positions in society. Additionally, I live with economic security in an upper middle-class neighborhood. This positions me in a physical space where crime rates are very low, and an economic space where resources are accessible and abundant. This becomes significant because it often allows me to exist adjacent to power in a way that cannot always be attained by other individuals.

Also significant is my identity as a Quaker. I practice pacifism and hold a firm spiritual position that guns do not belong in society. This belief system puts me immediately at odds with the practice of campus concealed carry and gun culture in general. Additionally, a cis-gendered woman who presents as traditionally feminine, I experienced being hypersexualized within certain components of gun culture from the same men who granted approval of my choice to practice concealed carry. All these identity markers are significant both to my interaction with intersectional feminism and with gun culture.

Utilizing Intersectional Feminism to Analyze Guns and Gun Culture

Early advocates of an intersectional approach to understanding the role of women in society often rooted their work in exploring violence against women (Carastathis, 2016; Beal,

2008; Crenshaw, 1989, 1991). Sojourner Truth highlighted the violence Black slave women experienced at the hands of both society and their owners (Carastathis, 2016). Beal (1970) explored how women of color had their bodies controlled through both lack of access to birth control and forced sterilization. Crenshaw (1989, 1991) examined how women of color were

39 uniquely affected by both the enactment of and the reaction to domestic violence from a legal standpoint. In contemporary society, gun violence is not something that exclusively impacts women; however, there are some very specific ways in which women are uniquely impacted by the prevalence of both guns and gun violence. When I started exploring my personal relationship as a woman to campus concealed carry policies, I felt keenly aware of the ways in which my multiple subjectivities impacted my experiences. As a white woman, I experienced a great deal of social approval for securing a concealed carry permit. At the same time, as a female faculty member, I felt threatened by the prospect of young men in my classes carrying weapons.

Utilizing an intersectional framework for interpreting these experiences allows me to examine how my personal experiences were shaped within the broader cultural constructs of race, class, gender, ability, and power. Understanding my relationship to the world within the scope of these factors is significant for being able to examine my experiences. It is also vital for understanding where and how my experiences are likely different from those of other women. Cho, Crenshaw, and McCall (2013) posit that

what makes an analysis intersectional – whatever terms it deploys, whatever its iteration,

whatever its field or discipline – is its adoption of an intersectional way of thinking about

the problem of sameness and difference and its relation to power. This framing –

conceiving of categories not as distinct but as always permeated by other categories, fluid

and changing, always in the process of creating and being created by dynamics of power

– emphasizes what intersectionality does rather than what intersectionality is” (p. 795).

This study of campus concealed carry is laden with commentary on dynamics of power. As a faculty member, I have power over students. However, as a female faculty member, it is not uncommon to experience sexism at the hands of male students. As a white woman, I hold power

40 in society that allows me to carry a weapon without fear of being shot for it. At the same time, as a woman, I live with the ever-present fear of male violence being enacted against my person. All these conflicts were highlighted throughout my experiences and will be discussed in both the autoethnographic stories presented in this work as well as the content analysis of these stories. In the next chapter, I will outline critical autoethnography as a research methodology and detail how intersectional feminism can be utilized within an autoethnographic framework.

CHAPTER THREE: CONTEXTUALIZING CAMPUS CONCEALED CARRY AS A

PART OF AMERICAN GUN CULTURE

American culture has a long and complicated history with guns and gun violence. The pro-gun side of American culture was codified alongside the founding of the country in the second amendment of the constitution. The amendment states: “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed” (Constitution of the United States, 1787 p. 12). These twenty-six words have been the subject of controversy and debate ever since they were written (Birnbaum, 2013; Arrigo &

Acheson, 2016). A lesser discussed, but equally important cultural component is America’s “gun control culture” (Birnbaum, 2013). As long as guns have been available, there have been attempts to regulate who has access to them, where people can bring them, and how they are utilized. Understanding the ways in which the United States of America has had an ambivalent relationship to and history with guns is important for providing context to the contemporary conversation about guns on campus.

Because the cultural landscape surrounding guns on campus and campus concealed carry is ever-shifting, this literature review provides a snapshot of the topic at a specific point in time.

Mass shootings happen at institutions of education on a regular basis making it difficult to publish an up-to-date comprehensive history on the subject. I anticipate the inevitability of another mass shooting taking place within hours, or days of completing this work.

This chapter serves three major functions in the over-all text. First, this chapter provides a brief history of gun rights in American culture, including the history of gun-free spaces, shall- issue gun laws, and the movement to implement campus concealed carry policies. This history includes an overview of active shooters in educational spaces and examines how these shootings

42 have shaped American gun culture and politics. Second, this chapter provides an examination of what is already known about campus concealed carry policies. This includes a review of studies conducted examining the cost of campus concealed carry, student and faculty perceptions of campus concealed carry, and what we already know about who chooses to practice concealed carry where legal. Lastly, this chapter provides context necessary for understanding the role of guns in American culture.

The Rise of School Shootings in America

Between 1997 and 2013, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence estimates there were a total of 220 school shootings (Towers et. al, 2015). This section will highlight the school shootings that held the most significant impact, either politically or culturally, on America’s relationship to guns on campus. However, it should be noted that the overwhelming number of school shootings, both big and small, has created a general feeling that active shooters are simply a part of the modern-day American experience. This has simultaneously created a pro-gun control and a pro-gun on campus movements as people have reacted in various ways to this social problem.

Although it was not the first school shooting to happen, it was the murder of 15 children at Columbine High School in 1999 that mainstreamed the idea of school shootings in America

(Larkin, 2009; DeLeon, 2012). Larkin (2009) referred to the rampage shooting at Columbine as a

“cultural watershed” and notes that it was the second most covered media event of the entire decade – the number one event was the OJ Simpson car chase (Larkin, 2009). DeLeon (2012) notes that Columbine “left an indelible mark on our common psyche” (pg. 152). The shooters,

Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, became household names and a national conversation about bullying, mental health, and school safety have been evolving ever since.

Prior to their attack on the school, Harris and Klebold recorded a series of videos referred to as the basement tapes wherein they gave elaborate justifications for why they planned to kill their classmates (Larkin, 2009). These tapes combined with Harris’s writings published on his website “Trench Coat Mafia” created a legacy in which “Harris and Klebold have attained mythical status in the pantheon of outcast student subcultures. They have been honored and emulated in subsequent rampage shootings and attempts” (Larkin, 2009, p. 1314). School shooters have since planned attacks on the anniversary of Columbine, or attacks meant to surpass the death toll of students murdered in the Columbine shooting. The increase school violence has also given rise to a phenomenon referred to as the “Columbine effect” (Larkin, 2009). This refers to the increasing likelihood of students reporting threats made by their peers when compared to the time prior to Columbine.

Although Columbine holds significant relevance in the history of our national conversation around school shootings, it is important to note how the race and class of the shooters impacted the trajectory of the national conversation about school violence. Additionally, the whiteness of the victims and the location of the school brought attention to school shootings in a way that we had not previously witnessed. Kimmel and Mahler (2003) discuss the two distinct “waves of school violence” from a historical standpoint (p. 1442). The first wave took place between 1982 and 1991, where the school shootings that occurred were classified as non- random. This classification was given to school shootings where the shooter had a specific target, and the shooting was associated with a dispute over girlfriends or drugs (Kimmel & Mahler,

2003). During this wave, school shootings were most likely to occur in an urban environment and the shooters were most often Black. In the second wave of school violence, starting in 1992, the landscape of school shootings changed. School shootings began to take place in rural or

44 suburban communities, the victims were often shot at random, the weapons shifted from handguns to rifles, and the perpetrators became almost exclusively white (Kimmel & Mahler, 2003;

DeLeon, 2012). During both waves, the shooters were all male. (Kimmel & Mahler, 2003).

Significant differences between the waves are the shifting of the racial demographic of the shooters and victims from black to white, and the move from urban to suburban or rural communities. Additionally, it is significant that the shootings changed from targeted victims over specific grievances to what Larkin (2009) refers to as rampage shootings. Larkin (2009) defines a rampage shooting as meeting the following criteria “(a) A student or a former student brings a gun to school with the intention of shooting somebody, (b) the gun is discharged and at least one person is injured and (c) the shooter attempts to shoot more than one person, at least one of whom was not specifically targeted” (p. 1310). Columbine is often held up as the primary example of a rampage shooting because it exemplified the way dominant discourse around school shootings changed as a result of this shift from the first to the second wave of school violence (Larkin, 2009). Kimmel and Mahler (2003) write “as the race and class of the perpetrators have shifted, so too has the public perception of school violence” (pg. 1443) They further argue that “as the shooters have become White and suburban middle-class boys, the public has shifted the blame away from group characteristics to individual psychological problems” (p. 1443). In short, the rampage shooting at Columbine in 1999 impacted the national conversation because the shooters and the victims were white, and middle-class. The first wave of school violence failed to create a public outcry because the shooters and victims were predominantly Black and assumed to be low-income. Although Columbine does represent a turning point in the national conversation around school shootings, it should be noted that

Columbine did not actually mark the beginning of school violence in American culture. It did,

45 however, mark a significant shift in who was perpetrating the violence and where it was taking place.

In April of 2007, the cultural phenomenon of school violence spread to institutions of higher education. A young man with a mental illness murdered a female student and a resident advisor at a dormitory on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State College

(Virginia Tech). Just a few hours later, he opened fire on campus, ultimately killing 32 people and injuring twenty-five others (Birnbaum, 2013; Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, 2007;

Jang, Kang, Dierenfeldt, & Lindsteadt, 2014; Park, Holody, & Zhang, 2012). This has come to be recognized as the deadliest mass shooting our country has ever experienced at an institution of higher education. Dubbed the “Virginia Tech Massacre” by the mainstream media, Robert

Birnbaum (2013) writes: “the act of a single mentally disturbed student became a watershed event in the guns on campus debate” (p. 8). As I will outline later in this chapter, the shootings at

Virginia Tech had a significant impact on the legislative campaign to legalize concealed carry on college campuses. The Virginia Tech shooting, which occurred at a predominantly white institution, is also significant in that the shooter himself was a person of color. Because of this, his race was specifically noted in multiple news reports (Park, Holody, & Zhang, 2012).

Although Columbine and Virginia Tech are often discussed in relationship to each other for their similarities in cultural impact, the Whiteness of the Columbine shooters was almost entirely absent from media coverage of the shooting (Park, Holody, & Zhang, 2012).

Like many people, I can remember exactly where I was when I heard the news that twenty-five first grade students had been murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012. Perhaps it was the tender age of the victims, but this school shooting was believed by many to be especially egregious. There was a great deal of speculation this event would compel some form

46 of legislative movement towards gun control policies (Fox & DeLateur, 2013). Rather, the event gave birth to a movement of Sandy Hook truthers—or people who contend that the event never really happened. The ‘Truthers’ claims the event was staged by left wing politicians to force gun control measures into legislation (Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, 2007). The shootings at Sandy Hook did ultimately lead to an increase in legislation, but not legislation implementing gun control. Rather the country saw an increase in policies and legislation eliminating gun-free spaces and/or increasing the ability of teachers to practice concealed carry (Perez, 2017).

In 2018, a gunman walked into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida and opened fire. Seventeen people were murdered, and an additional fourteen were wounded. This surpassed Columbine High School to become the largest mass shooting at a public school in

American history. But there was one significant difference between the survivors of Columbine and the survivors of Stoneman Douglas. The survivors of Columbine have grown up in a world where school shootings were not considered normal. The survivors of Stoneman Douglas, likely small children when the shootings at Columbine took place, have never known anything else. In the aftermath of the shooting, student survivors from Stoneman Douglas organized themselves and began to lobby for an increase in gun control legislation. These students partnered with the

Women’s March organization to orchestrate the National School Walkout (Gray, 2018), asking their peers around the country to walk-out of school in protest of gun violence. The walk-out lasted seventeen minutes, one minute for each of the people murdered at Stoneman Douglas. In addition to the walk-out, they organized March for Our Lives, a rally for gun control legislation held in Washington D.C. (Gray, 2018). Lastly, the students publicly asked for a national boycott of any companies with ties to the National Rifle Association (Gray, 2018). March for Our Lives

47 is now a national organization with a ten-point gun-control policy initiative and chapters around the country (https://marchforourlives.com).

The school shootings at Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, and Stoneman Douglas do not represent the entire history of school shootings in America. Rather, they represent only a small percentage of the number of schools who have experienced an active shooter. However, they do represent significant moments in the trajectory of school shootings and each incident has held significant influence over the cultural construction of what it means for students to attend public school in America. In the introduction of this work I shared a story about the use of active-shooter drills in public schools. The existence of active shooter drills in schools highlights one of the ways in which school violence has shaped the culture of public education.

A Brief History of the Movement to Bring Concealed Carry to a School Near You

Although the gun control debate often tends to focus on various interpretations of the second amendment, this is only one piece of a much more complicated network of gun laws and legislation that control who has access to guns in America. The American gun-lobby has a long history of advocating for guns to be more accessible to the average citizen. As early as the

1960’s lobbyists have been creating a gun-friendly society through strategic policy changes accomplished at the state level. One of the most successful campaigns has been to change “may issue” gun laws to “shall issue” gun laws (Grossman & Lee, 2008). With may issue gun laws, states have wide latitude to deny a concealed carry permit to people on virtually any grounds.

The change to “shall issue” (p. 198) gun laws eliminates that discretion by mandating that if a person has met basic criteria for a permit, it “shall” be issued by the state (Grossman & Lee,

2008; Prabha Unnithan, Pogrebin, Stretesky, & Venor, 2008). In 1960 only two states had implemented “shall issue” laws. However, in the 1990’s the movement with an additional ten

48 states changing their laws over the course of the decade (Grossman & Lee, 2008). By 2003, the number of states with “shall issue” laws had jumped to thirty-four (Grossman & Lee, 2008).

Presently, regardless of “may issue” or “shall issue”, all fifty states have some type of legislation that allows private citizens to carry concealed weapons if they meet certain criteria set forth by the state (National Conference of State Legislators, 2017).The process for obtaining a concealed carry license varies by state, but a common expectation is that individuals participate in some type of formal training prior to applying for the permit. Later in this work I will discuss my own experience taking both a basic and an enhanced concealed carry permit. A handful of states, including Idaho, now allow residents to carry a concealed weapon without obtaining a permit at all (Bartholdt, 2017; Legislature of the State of Idaho, 2016). The right to carry was affirmed in 2008 by the Supreme Court of the United States with a ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller (554 US 570). The ruling upheld that individuals have a right to carry handguns for protection and that right is independent of service in a state militia. The ruling also upheld earlier cases that affirmed there were certain “sensitive spaces” where gun bans were legal and constitutional (Arrigo & Acheson, 2016). Public schools have long been considered “sensitive spaces” and thus are typically regarded as gun-free zones (Brady Center to Prevent Gun

Violence, 2007). Despite this, there has been a growing conversation as to whether K-12 teachers should be armed, or if public schools should have armed guards (Birnbaum, 2012; Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence). This debate has been a staple of public policy discourse since the school shooting at Columbine in 1999. The conversation became increasingly prevalent as the numbers of highly publicized school shootings has continued to grow and American culture has shifted to include a narrative about gun violence in elementary, middle, and high schools (Brady

Center to Prevent Gun Violence, 2007; Wike & Fraser, 2009). In the aftermath of the school

49 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary school, the country saw an increase in local legislation aimed at eliminating gun-free spaces in public schools. Several school districts began to promote a teacher’s right to carry guns for self-defense and defense of their students. In the state of Texas, for example, schools have historically been considered gun-free zones. Prior to Sandy Hook only one Texas school district had a pro-gun policy. Post Sandy Hook, an additional seven districts changed their policy to a more pro-gun position after the state passed legislation encouraging districts to do so (Perez, 2017). A similar scenario played out in the aftermath of the shootings at

Stoneman Douglas, when the state of Florida proposed legislation that would expand opportunities for teachers to practice concealed carry. Governor Rick Desantis signed the measures into law in 2019, even after survivors of the Stoneman Douglas shootings publicly challenged the policy (Associated Press, 2019).

The Movement to Bring Concealed Carry to a Campus Near You

Despite the alarmingly high death toll at Virginia Tech, the Brady Center to Prevent Gun

Violence (2007) reports that before any of the victims had been buried, the gun lobby—typically associated with the National Rifle Association (NRA), had already issued a public statement calling for an increase in guns on college campuses nationwide. In the immediate aftermath of the shootings, state lawmakers around the country became increasingly invested in advocating that if students were granted the ability to concealed carry weapons on campus, they would be able to protect themselves and others in the event of an active shooter (Jang et al., 2014;

Birnbaum, 2013). The impact has been a significant increase in the number of legislative bodies nation-wide attempting to pass guns on campus legislation (Birnbaum, 2013). It is important to note that when discussing concealed carry, the rhetoric is typically understood to refer exclusively to handguns. A handgun is small enough that it can be concealed on your person or

50 in a handbag. Assault weapons, although they are often utilized by active-shooters in public schools, are generally not a part of the concealed carry conversation.

In 2008, just one year after the massacre at Virginia Tech, 17 states introduced legislation patterned after the state of Utah where concealed carry on campus had been legal since 2004

(Bennett, Kraft, & Grubb, 2012). Currently there are a total of eight states that have passed legislation allowing people with a concealed carry permit to legally carry on college campuses.

These states include Utah, Idaho, Oregon, Colorado, Texas, Mississippi, Kansas, and Wisconsin

(National Conference of State Legislators, 2017). It is unclear at this point how Idaho’s new law eliminating the need for a concealed carry permits will affect college campuses (Legislature of the State of Idaho, 2016). In addition to these states, Tennessee does not allow permit holders to carry weapons on campus but does have an exception for faculty members who are licensed to carry (National Conference of State Legislators, 2017). Twenty-four additional states have legislation that allows each individual college or university to create their own policy regarding guns on campus (National Conference of State Legislators, 2017). This leaves just seventeen states where legislation bans guns on campus, or that mandates college campuses be gun free zones (National Conference of State Legislators, 2017).

The relationship between school shootings and governmental policies regulating guns on campus and gun-free spaces is clear. In the aftermath of most major school shootings, there is an increase in gun lobbying for pro-gun legislation, and in many cases, an increase in local or state policies making guns more accessible to individuals, and state policies making concealed carry on campus legal.

Academic Freedom and Implications for Students and Faculty

When Utah became the first state to legalize campus concealed carry, opponents initially feared that guns on campus would infringe upon academic freedom. Critics argued “students might restrain their opinions during classroom discussions on controversial topics like abortion and affirmative action, out of fear that they would say something that would prompt a classmate to brandish a weapon” (Gose, 2002). Ultimately, it was the judicial system that determined college and universities were not exempt from allowing concealed weapons; thus, they would have to comply with existing laws allowing people to concealed carry (Gose, 2002). It is unclear whether professors and students felt the need to censor their speech in the immediate aftermath of this policy. However, there have been some concrete examples of how this policy has contributed to a loss of academic freedom. The most famous incident happened in 2014, after

Utah State University invited feminist scholar-activist Anita Sarkeesian to speak on campus.

Several faculty members and the speaker received death threats. An anonymous ultimatum was given to the University - if the event was not cancelled, there would be a campus shooting

(Sinor, 2014; Bowerman, 2014). Citing Utah's concealed carry law, campus officials indicated there was nothing they could do to ensure Sarkeesian's safety as they could not legally ban people from bringing concealed weapons into her speech. Sarkeesian cancelled her appearance out of fear for her safety and the safety of attendees, and students were deprived of the opportunity to hear her speak (Sinor, 2014; Bowerman, 2014).

In the same year as the Sarkeesian incident, Idaho joined the growing number of states to make it legal for students to carry concealed weapons on college campuses when state legislators passed SB1254. The law only specifies two locations on campus where concealed carry remains illegal, dormitories and any venue that holds more than 1,000 people (typically interpreted to

52 mean sports stadiums) (Bowerman, 2014; Legislature of the State of Idaho, 2014). Unless you are in a building that houses a large venue and you are there during a sporting event, anyone who has a concealed carry permit is legally entitled to bring a weapon into any classroom, faculty office, or designated student spaces such as Student Union Buildings or campus libraries. This law was passed despite all eight Presidents of Idaho’s colleges and universities critiquing the legislation, and with minimal input from campus staff, faculty and students (Russell, 2014).

Opposition to the law was typically grounded in concerns about student safety, but Idaho State

University (ISU) also expressed concerns over the financial impact of the legislation. ISU noted guns on campus would require an increase in security and estimated the bill would cost the institution $600,000 in the first year (Murty, McCamey, & Vyas, 2016). Boise State University

(BSU) quoted an even higher figure, suggesting the cost would be 3.5 million dollars, with

$895,000 in the first year and another 1.42 million for maintenance over time (American School and University, 2014).

It did not take long after SB 1254 was implemented for Idaho to see controversy. Just two months after guns on campus was legalized, a chemistry professor at Idaho State University accidentally discharged a concealed firearm while he was giving a lecture. The Idaho State

Journal reported that he did have a concealed carry permit, and nobody was injured in the incident except for the professor who shot himself in the foot. There were about 20 students in the classroom when the gun was discharged (Bryce, 2014). During the same semester, a Boise

State University professor attempted to implement a classroom policy requiring students to leave their bags at the front of the classroom. Her intention was to prevent them from having access to a concealed weapon. After student complaints the University informed her this was not an

53 acceptable course of action, and asking students to sit separately from their belongings, or their guns, would not be supported (Bowerman, 2014).

Student and Faculty Perceptions of Guns on Campus

As noted, when guns on campus legislation is introduced it is not uncommon for university presidents or other high-ranking administrators to express concerns. Bennett (2012) draws on the work of Stripling (2009) to illustrate:

The debate continues across the country with most university officials, as well as law

enforcement and campus safety experts, believing that allowing guns on campus would

pose new concerns, with some describing the proposed legislation as tantamount to

throwing gasoline on the fire of campus violence and student suicide (p. 338).

The University of Texas System Chancellor Francisco Cigarroa expressed similar concern in his letter to Governor Rick Perry on February 24, 2011. “There is a great concern that the presence of handguns, even if limited to licensed individuals who are 21 and older, will lead to an increase of both accidental shootings and self-inflicted wounds” (Murty, McCamey, & Vyas, 2016).

When legislation was introduced in Georgia, university officials released the following statement, “we do not think this [permitting firearms on campus] promotes a safe learning environment for our students or is in the best interest of the state or of the University System”

(Bennett, Kraft & Grubb, 2012, p. 350). Boise State University president Bob Kustra (2014) made the following statement available to students and faculty through the university website:

I have very serious concerns about the bill and its implications and have spoken out

against it recently in the media. I should note that every public college and university

president in our state and every member of the State Board of Education with

responsibility for K-20 schools in Idaho also oppose the bill (Kustra, 2014).

Despite the presence of university administration in the guns on campus debate, the voices of college students and faculty members are often lost or minimized in the legislative process (Bennett, Kraft & Grubb, 2012). Recently, there have been several studies conducted in an attempt to fill this gap and gauge student and faculty attitudes towards the presence of guns on campus. The overwhelming consensus shows that students and faculty do not welcome the presence of guns on campus. (Patten, Thomas, & Viotti, 2013; Bouffard et al., 2012; Lewis et al.,

2012; Murty, McCamey, & Vyas, 2016).

A study conducted at California State University, Chico, surveyed women on campus to determine how much they did, or did not, support the idea of concealed carry on campus.

Interestingly, this study found the majority of respondents, over 80 percent “did not want qualified individuals to be able to carry a gun on campus, did not feel safer with more concealed guns on campus, and did not think additional guns would promote a greater sense of campus safety” (Patten, Thomas & Viotti, 2013, p. 269). This study is particularly compelling in that mid-way through the study a female student was abducted, at gun point, from an off-campus location and then forced back to campus where she was assaulted. Shortly after this incident, a house party near campus got out of control and a couch was lit on fire in the middle of a street.

Police responded in riot gear and pepper spray was deployed against students (Patten, Thomas, &

Viotti, 2013). The researchers note that although these incidents may have caused an increased level of fear among students, particularly female students, the women who completed the survey after these incidents reported higher levels of rejection towards the idea of concealed weapons on campus. The authors note that other work has hypothesized that women, who are more likely to

55 be victimized by social ills such as sexual assault on campus, might be more inclined to welcome the opportunity to carry weapons for self-defense. Patten, Thomas, and Viotti (2013) outright rejected that notion, and in fact found the opposite to be true.

Other researchers have come to similar conclusions. Lewis et al. (2015) found that female respondents in their study were “significantly more likely to believe that the purchase of a military style assault weapons and high capacity magazines should be banned compared to their male counterparts” (p. 484). In another study, conducted in the state of Georgia, faculty members were asked their opinions on HB89 which proposed making it legal to carry guns on campus as well as in churches. The overwhelming majority reported they either opposed (56%) or strongly opposed (14%) the bill (Bennett, Kraft, & Grubb, 2014). Bouffard, Wells, Cavanaugh and

Nobles (2012) conducted a comparative analysis of student attitudes towards guns on campus between campuses in Texas and Washington. Despite the obvious demographic differences in these two locations, the authors found that students overwhelmingly reported that the presence of guns on campus would not increase their feelings of safety or security while on campus. Murty,

McCamey, and Vyas (2016) surveyed students at historically Black colleges and universities

(HBCU) and reported that over 77 percent of respondents did not think college students should carry a weapon to campus, even if it were legal. This survey was conducted in Georgia after legislation was passed making concealed carry legal, and the majority of respondents reported that legalized guns on campus did not make them feel safer (Murty, McCamey, & Vyas, 2016).

Who is carrying weapons on campus?

A popular argument in favor of campus concealed carry posits that it is better to have a

‘good guy with a gun’ to act as a protector in the event of an active shooter (Krueger, 2017).

Unfortunately, research does not necessarily support this construct. Bouffard, Nobles, Wells, and

Cavanaugh (2012) indicate that students who are carrying guns are more likely to “engage in binge drinking and risky behaviors” and “to be in trouble with the police” (p. 2245). Another study notes that students who reported having firearms at college were “more likely to report engaging in risky behaviors than those who did not own a gun” (Lewis et al., 2015, p. 483). In an earlier study, Miller, Hemenway, & Wechsler (1999) examined carefully the risk-taking habits of students who were more likely to carry guns on campus. They found that students who carry were more likely to engage in binge drinking, more likely to report needing to drink a beer at the beginning of every day, and more likely to be members of a fraternity. Additionally, they found a positive association between owning a gun and driving after binge drinking, being arrested for driving under the influence, and damaging property after binge drinking. Unsurprisingly, they also found that students with guns were more likely to require medical attention secondary to a car crash or a physical altercation (Miller, Hemenway, & Wechsler, 1999).

Gun Culture

There is a significant gap in the literature discussing the cultural implications of guns on campus. Thus, it is useful to turn to the literature exploring guns in society in a broader context to help understand the potential impact of guns on campus. Much of the existing research on gun culture focuses on the role of men. Several studies have found that men are more likely to use guns, more likely to feel comfortable in the presence of guns and have significant influence over a woman's decision to carry or not to carry a gun (Blair & Hyatt, 1995; Jang et al., 2014; Stroud,

2012; Carlson, 2013). In addition, one study found that male students were more likely to carry lethal weapons such as guns and knives, while women were more likely to carry non-lethal weapons such as pepper spray (Jang et al., 2015). That men are more likely to carry guns should be unsurprising, as Carlson (2013) points out, men as a group are more likely than women to be

57 murdered, more likely to be murdered by a gun, and they are more likely to be victimized by a stranger when compared to women (2013). These crime statistics are recognized and discussed in much of the existing literature. Hollander (2001) examines the discrepancy between men's actual vulnerability to violence and perceived vulnerability to violence. She notes that according to most statistics men are more likely to be victims of violence in every category apart from sexual assault. Despite this, throughout her research, Hollander (2001) finds that men and women discursively construct vulnerability as an exclusively feminine concept, except in the case of children who are male or men who are aging. She also notes that dangerousness is constructed as a marker of masculinity. Thus, we set up the idea that women are inherently victims and men are inherently perpetrators. She refers to this as "a mismatch between the geography of violence and the geography of fear" (Hollander, 2001, p. 84). I will return to this idea in the analysis chapter as I examine the ways in which I was perceived to be an inherent victim throughout my experience obtaining a concealed carry permit.

Despite strong evidence to suggest men are vulnerable to violence, when Stroud (2012) explored the various reasons men choose to carry weapons she found three key themes among her respondents, only one of which is directly related to perceived vulnerability to violence.

Themes that emerged from her study include respondents who use guns to identify as a family defender, respondents who use guns to compensate for their aging male body, and respondents who carried guns due to perceptions of being or living in dangerous neighborhoods (Stroud,

2012). Multiple researchers utilize social construction theories to better understand how society interprets concepts of crime, crime victims, vulnerability, dangerousness and violence. Most examine the ways in which these things are constructed in such a way as to become gendered within gun culture (Stroud, 2012; Hollander, 2001; Carlson, 2013; Blair & Hyatt, 1995;

Bankston, Thompson, Jenkins, & Forsyth, 1990). Most of the academic work that examines the gendered implications of gun-use are centered in feminist epistemologies. Although several of the studies cited here explore the implications of gender roles on guns, very few studies take an intersectional approach to understanding not just the implications of gender roles but understanding the intersections of race and gender inside gun culture. Other significant issues, like ability, sexual orientation, immigration status, etc. are generally absent from the literature entirely. However, there is some feminist-oriented research that examines the intersection of race and socioeconomic status in gun culture, but even in this work the focus is centered almost entirely on the experiences of white men.

Exploring the Intersection of Guns, Race, and Socioeconomic Status

As previously noted, one of the three key reasons survey respondents included in

Hollander's (2012) research chose to carry concealed weapons was their need to play the role of family protector. Carlson (2015) touches on this notion and takes it one step further by connecting a recent increase in gun ownership to the declining economy and loss of middle-class mobility. She examines how declining socioeconomic status and opportunity causes insecurity in the gender identity of male research participants. Carlson (2015) explores how, as a result of this insecurity, there has been an increase in gun ownership and concealed carry permits in men who are experiencing declining economic opportunity. Her research posits these men place enhanced emphasis on their role as protector to compensate for their loss of role as primary provider.

Carlson (2015) argues that the men in her study use guns as a way to reproduce hegemonic masculinity and perpetuate traditional gender roles. Carlson (2015) writes

When socioeconomic insecurity undermines men's role as provider (even if all men do

not experience this directly), guns provide a means for men to prove their utility and

relevance outside the breadwinner role. By pivoting hegemonic masculinity on men's

capacity as protectors, gun-toting men are able to lay claim to a rendition of hegemonic

masculinity that allows them to negotiate a sense of socioeconomic - and therefore,

gender – precarity. (p. 407)

In addition to using gun ownership as a way to reproduce and perform hegemonic masculinity in a world with diminishing economic opportunity, and thus for many, diminishing opportunities to enforce traditional gender roles, several studies also found a distinct relationship between white men using their status as gun owners to reproduce white privilege. Several authors indicate respondents in their surveys use discussion about class-based crime as coded language for discussing race (Bankston et al, 1990; Hollander, 2001; Stroud, 2012; Carlson, 2015). In identifying the various reasons respondents carry concealed weapons, Stroud (2012) found that respondents experienced concealed weapons as a way of not just reinforcing hegemonic masculinity, but also as a way to reproduce race and class-based ideas about good guys versus bad guys. Stroud (2012) writes "While these men see their own gun carrying as noble and just, they attribute violence and aggression to others particularly Black and Latino men" (p. 217).

Although this research is useful for providing a broader context for understanding gun culture, we see that the research predominantly centers the voices and experiences of white men.

In the literature, it is almost always assumed or implied that the majority of gun-owners are white men. This highlights a significant gap in the literature and leaves a lot of gaps in our over- all understanding of the role guns play in society. The role that guns play in communities of color, or other marginalized populations, is not adequately explored within existing literature.

The Great Equalizer

Carlson (2013) and Blair & Hyatt (1995) specifically examined the ways in which the

NRA markets guns to women as the great equalizer. Both studies highlight the hypocrisy of the

NRA marketing guns to women by claiming to be concerned about women's safety, while simultaneously lobbying against legislation that would protect women from violence, such as the

Violence Against Women Act (Carlson, 2013; Blair & Hyatt, 1995). Blair and Hyatt (1995) argue that marketing guns to women has nothing to do with their safety, instead positioning women as an untapped market with high revenue potential. It is unsurprising that the gun lobby would be interested in finding ways to market guns to women. It is after all, an industry designed to make money. “The handgun industry alone exceeds one billion dollars’ worth of firepower each year” (Johnson, 2017, p. 112). By marketing guns to women with a feminist message of empowerment, the NRA actively ignores the fact that "most evidence indicates that ownership of guns by women is more likely to result in serious harm to women than it is to protect them"

(Blair & Hyatt, 1995, p. 120). When examining themes of empowerment in marketing guns to women, Carlson (2013) poses the question "how can this discourse of inclusivity be reconciled with accounts of gun politics as masculinist and patriarchal" (p. 60). Throughout her research,

Carlson (2013) explores this question and concludes "the gun carriers I interviewed generally constructed crime from a masculine perspective and, in doing so, misrecognize the specificities of domestic violence, thus marginalizing women's experiences in potentially dangerous and costly ways" (p. 61). Again, there is an implicit assumption that the NRA is marketing guns exclusively to white women but this discrepancy is not thoroughly evaluated in the literature.

It is interesting that the NRA would market guns to women as the “great equalizer” as this is often a refrain heard among supporters of concealed carry on campus. In one particularly

61 newsworthy incident, a representative from the state of Nevada was heavily criticized after arguing “If these young, hot little girls on campus have a firearm, I wonder how many men will want to assault them? These sexual assaults that are occurring would go down once these predators have a bullet in their head” (Lopes, 2015). This argument is not uncommon in the campus gun debate, but her reference to college women as “hot little girls” garnered substantial criticism for its presumed dismissiveness of the seriousness of campus sexual assault. The argument also ignores the reality that if women are carrying guns to protect themselves from potential rapists, the rapists themselves could also be carrying guns which may in fact put women at greater risk for harm. Andy Pelosi, president of the Campaign to Keep Guns Off

Campus call this tactic out for its hypocrisy, stating “this is a tactic by the gun lobby to increase their sales and continue to push weapons into different places” (Lopes, 2015). This approach preys upon increasing concerns over campus safety on two fronts. First, are the increasing concerns about the safety of American women on campus as the national discussion around sexual assault on campus continues to gain traction. Second, the argument preys upon the fears of parents and college aged children about campus safety in the era of highly publicized mass shootings on campus. Lawmakers are arguing for campus concealed carry using safety concerns in two ways. First, they are positioning women as potential victims of sexual violence who need weapons to protect themselves. Second, they are positioning all college students and campus faculty/staff as potential victims of a mass shooting who would all benefit from the presence of a

‘good guy’ with a gun. As a result, we see guns presented as the great equalizer in a variety of ways and not just as an equalizer for women.

Conclusion

A review of the literature allows us to draw several conclusions regarding the guns on campus debate. First, the issue is far more nuanced and complex than simply debating whether we should have more guns, or ban guns, on college campuses (Birnbaum, 2012; Arrigo &

Acheson, 2016). Second, most of the research available on the topic concludes that students do not necessarily want more guns on campus and having guns on campus does not make students feel any safer (Bennett et al., 2012; Cavanaugh et al., 2012; Komanduri et al., 2016; Lewis et al.,

2015; Wells et al., 2011; Patten et al., 2013). Third, university administrations have been vocal in their opposition to the legalization of concealed carry on campus (American School and

University, 2014; Bennett et al., 2012; Kustra, 2014; Murty et all, 2016; Russell, 2014). Fourth, students who are most likely to carry concealed weapons on campus should not be assumed able or willing to act in the capacity of a “good guy with a gun.” Rather, studies have shown they are more likely to engage in binge drinking, more likely to drive under the influence, and more likely to need medical care secondary to a car crash or a physical altercation, and more likely to engage in fighting or the destruction of property while under the influence (Miller et al., 1999; Bouffard et al., 2012). Lastly, there are several significant gaps in the literature that should be addressed.

Most of the research regarding guns on campus focuses on understanding student attitudes about concealed carry or understanding the students who choose to concealed carry.

Other research focuses heavily on the social constructions of gender and race and the ways in which these identities are (re)constructed using concealed weapons. Despite this, the existing literature lacks an intersectional approach to understanding how gun culture impacts different populations in varying ways. For example, guns are marketed to women as the ultimate form of empowerment, but social structures make it clear that this marketing is meant for white women.

Nobody is examining what happens to women of color who use guns for self-protection or why this population is largely ignored by lobbying organizations like the NRA. Instead most of the research explores the relationships between concealed carrying weapons, reproductions of hegemonic masculinity, or as acting out the role of family protector and provider in an era of diminishing economic opportunities. (Carlson, 2013 & 2015; Hollander 2001; Stroud, 2012).

There is a significant lack of research exploring the implications guns on campus might have for the teaching environment. Are professors changing the way they teach in response to the presence of guns in their classrooms? Does the presence of guns on campus have pedagogical implications for the quality of education students are receiving? What does the presence of guns on campus mean for administrative personnel, support staff, or other student-based services?

Murty et al. (2016) point out from the perspective of campus mental health personnel:

If guns were available, everyone on campus whose job entails saying no would become a

potential target, a long list that includes professors who refuse to change low grades,

financial aid officials who offer disappointing aid packages, coaches who cut athletes’

playing time, residence life administrators who impose disciplinary violations, and tenure

committees who deny tenure applications. Nor would college clinicians necessarily be

spared. Normally we are the good guys, perceived supporters, but angry and suspicious

students are capable of turning anyone into an enemy, ourselves included (p. 64).

It is this gap in the literature that I find most concerning. The evidence already suggests that faculty and students are uncomfortable with the presence of guns on campus, now research needs to begin exploring the ways in which this new reality impacts the learning environment and the people who exist within that space. This work seeks to contribute to the existing body of knowledge about the role of guns on campus.

CHAPTER FOUR: METHODOLOGY OF THE STUDY

On a dreary September afternoon, over coffee with the chairs of my dissertation committee, I shared a story about my field-work that had not yet made an appearance in my writing. The story referenced a trip I had made to a local gun show with my husband and two sons. The stop had been unplanned. We were driving home from our weekly Quaker meeting and

I noticed a sign that the local fairgrounds were hosting a gun show – today! It seemed fortuitous so without giving much thought, I told my husband we should stop. Had I thought about it in advance, it is highly unlikely I would have taken my children to a gun show immediately after attending a Quaker meeting. The lesson in their children’s group that morning was about the origins of pacifism. But there we were. Although several very interesting things happened in the short amount of time we were there, a significant moment occurred when a vendor offered to let my then seven-year-old son shoot a flame-thrower. The vendor made one of those ‘this is a joke, but if you are game, I am completely serious’ comments about how he always brought a little something along to entertain the kiddos. Never having seen a flame thrower before, I looked from the flame thrower to the man several times, unsure of how to respond. If you had stood the flame thrower upright, it likely would have been as tall as the child being invited to play with it.

My son was staring at the man with wide-eyes and an open mouth, knowing full well that he isn’t allowed to play with guns or fire, much less both at the same time. He was completely unsure of what to make of an adult offering to let him shoot fire from a gun.

My committee chairs had several questions about the gun show, but their main question was why they hadn’t read this story anywhere in my work. The reason for this is somewhat complicated. In order to explain why my work presents certain experiences and not others, I need to give a detailed explanation of both critical autoethnography as a methodology and the ways in

65 which I have utilized this methodology to craft my work. In this chapter, I will define critical autoethnography and make an argument for my interpretation of critical autoethnography as an intersectional feminist approach to research. Additionally, I will lay out the research design of this dissertation and the steps I took to collect observational and participatory data in the field. I will discuss the writing process by which I have crafted the narrative stories you will read in the next chapter and explain how I anchored them in a broader cultural context. I will also explore my thought process for selecting narratives to be included or excluded from this work. This chapter will also explore the ethical implications of research on campus concealed carry, and how I chose to navigate several complex ethical questions.

Critical Autoethnography Defined

In the next chapter of this text, you will read a short story about the moment in time that sparked my interest in studying guns on campus and gun culture. From a standpoint of five years later, that moment is marked in my memory for the significant impact it had on my development as both a person and an academic. However, in the immediate aftermath of this experience, I felt confused and afraid. I did not know how to make meaning out of what had happened to me or what had happened to the dynamics of my classroom. I needed to make meaning out of this experience – and in order to do so I felt compelled to tell the story. I also found that I needed to allow myself time to process what had happened. I felt driven to better understand gun culture as a social construct in order to provide context to my personal experiences. By situating my experiences within a broader culture of guns in the United States of America, I was able to better understand how campus concealed carry policies had come into existence, and to better understand cultural dynamics that created an environment where students in my classes were concerned about the presence of guns in the classroom. It was with the goal of better

66 understanding the social context of my experience that I initially formulated the idea for this research study, and why I opted to utilize a critical autoethnographic approach. Additionally, as a researcher I have been heavily influenced by arts-informed research practices, and the ability to utilize story telling in autoethnographic research is important for work that is rooted in lived experiences.

Autoethnographic research as a methodology is most simply defined as the “study of self” (Hughes & Pennington, 2017, pg. 2). The researcher is at the center of this autoethnographic self-study, allowing them to explore their own relationships and experiences within sociocultural contexts (Hughes & Pennington, 2017). By examining the relationship between the researcher’s experiences and sociocultural contexts, the researcher can interpret and analyze their relationships and experiences with the intention of making meaning of them

(Boylorne & Orbe, 2014; Bochner & Ellis, 2016;). Critical autoethnography is a type of autoethnography that addresses “processes of unfairness or injustice within a particular lived domain” (Madison, 2012, p 5). Critical autoethnographic researchers have a responsibility to examine their personal positionality and identify their positions of privilege or positions of marginalization as a means of taking ownership of their individual subjectivities (Boylorne &

Orbe, 2016). Holman Jones (2016) adds that critical auto ethnographers are also responsible for utilizing a theoretical framework for critiquing the sociocultural contexts of their experiences.

She articulates the relationship between autoethnographic stories and theory when she writes that

“theory asks about and explains the nuances of an experience and the happenings of a culture; story is the mechanism of illustrating and embodying these nuances and happenings” (Holman

Jones, 2016, pg. 229). Thus, critical autoethnography not only provides a framework for telling stories, it encourages the critique of the cultural influences on our stories, allows researchers to

67 focus on social justice-oriented topics of inequity and marginalization, and integrates the use of theory to make meaning of the researchers lived experiences.

Given this, critical autoethnography held significant appeal for me as a researcher attempting to both make meaning of my own lived experience with guns on campus and critique the presence of guns on campus from a social justice standpoint. In this work I have been able to explore gun culture through my individual lens and examinine the impact of my personal positionalities on my experiences. I have also been able to situate my experiences in a more macro context by exploring and critiquing the sociocultural complexities of gun culture in the

United States of America.

Bochner and Ellis (2016) discuss the ways in which autoethnography allows us to explore multiple layers of consciousness while connecting the personal to the cultural. In the next section

I will further explore the importance of connecting the personal to the political, but as I have outlined in chapter two, when it comes to guns, the political is often difficult to distinguish from the cultural. Dauphinee (2010) echoes Bochner and Ellis when she articulates the importance of the connection between the personal and the political, articulating what drives her desire to write autoethnographies and how her personal orientation impacts her writing.

In all cases, I write because I become aware that something is not the way I thought it

was. Something has hurt me. Something has made me angry or sleepless or aggrieved in

some way. I don’t think the fact that I have personal motivations that orient me toward

the political world I study is particularly unique (Dauphinee, 2010, p. 808).

Autoethnography is deeply rooted in the idea of story-telling. Telling and sharing our stories is powerful; our entire lives are recorded through narrative story-telling. Boylorne, Orbe, and Ellis (2016) write that “according to Fisher (1987) human beings are storytellers, and all

68 forms of communication are best understood as stories” (p. 28). Autoethnographic research is fundamentally about the sharing of stories, and this creates an opportunity to “invite readers into the lived experience of the presumed “Other” and to experience it viscerally” (Boylorne & Orbe,

2016). In chapter one, I discussed the ways in which this work is intended to create a connection between the author and the reader. This is accomplished through the sharing of stories and the accompanying invitation to the reader to observe the author on their journey of exploration and understanding. Each reader may experience my stories differently, and in turn this will create a different relationship between the reader and the work.

Narratives, regardless of the how they are constructed, “share the fundamental interest in making sense of experience” (Chase, 2003, p. 273). This is consistent with the way I experienced narrative story-telling throughout this work. The process of crafting and then telling a story allowed me to make sense of my experiences and to give my experiences meaning. Boylorne,

Orbe, and Ellis (2016) write of “sensemaking as a process whereby individuals draw from their personal, social, and cultural lives in the pursuit of understanding. It is not a linear process that has clear and logical structures” (p. 190). Further, they write “The cyclical, ongoing process of sensemaking involves a constant evolution of experience, observations, interpretation, evaluation, and action” (Boylorne, Orbe, & Ellis, 2016, p. 190). Autoethnography reflects this cyclical process. As a methodology, it allows the researcher to make sense of their lived experiences as situated in broader cultural constructs. At the same time, autoethnography also allows the audience to make sense of these broader cultural constructs by thinking about them through the lens of the lived experiences of the author. Thus, the art of storytelling is critical in creating an autoethnographic piece that allows the author to create these connections for and with the reader. My own work reflects this cyclical process, which I will detail later in this chapter.

Bochner and Ellis (2016) discuss at length the importance and value of the writing process, or the crafting of a narrative, as a component of autoethnographic research. They assert it is through the writing process that we come to understand our experiences and why they are important or reflective of broader cultural processes. The process of writing autoethnographic research includes writing, reflecting, and revising, supplemented by careful thought and consideration. I had never considered writing about guns before I felt personally impacted by their implied presence in certain spaces I considered my own. Writing about guns, and my experiences with them, challenged me to think about my relationship to them with a level of depth that I never would have achieved without the writing process. It is my hope that by sharing my written experiences with others, they will feel a connection to my experiences and obtain a new or an enhanced connection to the topic at hand.

Although personal experience is a hallmark of autoethnography, it should not be confused with autobiography. There are several factors that ground a researcher’s personal reflection in research methods. In the Handbook of Autoethnography Holman Jones, Adams, and

Ellis (2013) outline four essential components that can be used to distinguish autoethnography from other forms of research that explore personal experiences. These markers of autoethnography include; “(1) Purposefully commenting on/critiquing of culture and cultural practices, (2) making contributions to existing research, (3) embracing vulnerability with purpose, and (4) creating a reciprocal relationship with audiences in order to compel a response”

(Holman Jones, Adams, & Ellis, 2013, p. 22). By these standards, there are four components that make this project autoethnographic. (1) This work offers cultural commentary and critique of campus concealed carry policies, gun culture, and the systems of hegemonic patriarchy/female disempowerment that contribute to them. (2) This research contributes to the existing body of

70 knowledge on guns, gun culture, and guns on campus. (3) In this research I have strategically placed myself in cultural spaces that I don’t ordinarily interact with, thus embracing and exploring my own feelings of vulnerability as a woman living in a gun culture. (4) Lastly, this work seeks to engage the reader in a manner that will compel them to engage in the campus concealed carry debate, and to think critically about the role of guns in society. According to

Bochner and Ellis (2016) autoethnography allows us to explore multiple layers of consciousness while connecting the personal to the cultural. This work centers my lived experiences and situates them within the broader cultural context of campus concealed carry, thus, highlighting and exploring the culture in which campus concealed carry has come into existence.

Autoethnography from a Feminist Perspective

A great deal has been written about the capacity for utilizing feminist theory as a foundation for a feminist research methodology (Chafetz, 2004; Presser, 2005; Foster, 2007).

With the re-emergence of feminism as a popular ideology in the sixties, female academics and feminist thinkers undertook a series of important tasks. First, they sought to “demonstrate the inadequacies and downright errors created in our disciplines because of the fact that knowledge creation had long been almost entirely a monopoly of one social type, White males” (Chafetz,

2004, p. 968). Second, they sought to “create new knowledge about gender (often specifically only women) and about the role gender plays in social, political, economic, and cultural institutions” (Chafetz, 2004, p. 968). Over time, feminist theorists reclaimed many of the traditional ways of knowing that had long been rejected by an exclusively male group and

“eliminate hierarchies of knowledge construction” (Presser, 2005). In addition, women pioneered new theoretical constructs. In the case of intersectional feminism, feminist thinkers drew from a long history of examining the interconnected nature of oppression in order to fully articulate

71 intersectional feminism as a theoretical framework (Crenshaw, 1989, 1991; Beal, 2008; King,

1998; Hill-Collins, 1986). Although many women in academia started integrating a feminist perspective into their work, Chafetz (2004) cautions against assuming that a woman’s perspective is synonymous with a feminist perspective. Women, she notes, have a vast array of experiences and simply being a woman does not mean you understand or appreciate the implications of gender-based oppression (Chafetz, 2004).

Although the infusion of feminism into research has impacted methodologies in a variety of ways, here I am going to focus on the two that are most pertinent to writing critical autoethnography. First, feminist informed research methodologies challenged traditional hierarchical power structures between the researcher and their subjects. A major feminist critique of research, and one that is particularly relevant to many classic ethnographies, is the belief that the male gaze limits the researcher from fully observing and integrating the perspectives and experiences of women (Reinharz, 1992). Reinharz (1992) notes that historically, ethnographies written by male researchers treated women as decoration, and that discussions of women were often centered on the role of women only in relationship to the men around them. To incorporate a feminist perspective into ethnographic research a question needs to ask, “what women are for themselves” (Reinharz, 1992, p. 52). Furthermore, Reinharz (1993) stated:

Understanding the experience of women from their own point of view corrects a major

bias of nonfeminist participant observation that trivializes females’ activities and

thoughts or interprets them from the standpoint of the men in society or of the male

researcher” (p. 52).

Feminist ethnographers challenged the absence of women’s experiences being represented in ethnography and shifted their framework from doing research on people to doing research with

72 people. This not only disrupted the imbalance of power, but also opened the door for the possibility of the researcher acknowledging how they were influenced or changed by both the research and the participants.

The second significant contribution of feminist theory to research methods comes in the form of narrative story telling. Drawing from the popular second wave practice of consciousness raising, the ‘personal is political’ emerged during the second wave as a metaphor for the desire of women to connect their lived experiences to broader cultural constructs (Firestone & Koudt,

1970). Consciousness raising took many forms, but the collective sharing of lived experiences around topics like domestic violence and sexual assault served as a catalyst for the creation of domestic violence shelters and sexual assault response teams around the country. It is this notion—that of giving credibility and power to the sharing of women’s lived experiences, that most closely aligns feminist research methodology with critical autoethnography. Presser (2005) wrote: “Feminist research begins with women’s own perspectives and experiences” (p. 2016).

This idea aligns with what Chafetz (2004) identifies as “the goal of feminist research is rich description of the concrete experiences of women’s everyday life” (p. 972). In this regard, I posit that critical autoethnography can be utilized as a feminist research methodology given that it allows women to fully explore their personal experiences while challenging dominant cultural constructs.

There are multiple components of autoethnography that make it a research methodology well suited to furthering the agenda of feminist research. First, it allows the opportunity for exploring personal experiences within a cultural context. This creates the possibility of utilizing the personal as political within a research context. Autoethnography situates the experiences of the researcher within the broader scope of a cultural phenomenon while simultaneously making

73 meaning of an individual experience. Boylorne and Orbe (2014), describing autoethnography, explained:

By acknowledging difference, which influences how we see and experience the world,

autoethnography has the capacity to resist mythical normative perspectives that don’t

account for the diversity of race, age, class, gender/sex, sexuality, ability status,

education, religion, and region, which also represent a distinction in experiences. (p. 18)

Boylorne and Orbe (2014) add that autoethnographic writers “have routinely identified and used their multiple standpoints to situate their stories and lives to call out positions of privilege and expose moments of vulnerability” (p. 18). All these components contribute to my interpretation of autoethnography not just as inherently feminist, but also fundamentally intersectional in its ability to take a holistic approach exploring the complexities of the human experience.

Ellis and Bochner (2016) write about the importance of living a writing life and the importance of identifying as a writer. They also write about autoethnography as a way of engaging in conversation with the reader (Ellis & Bochner, 2016). This concept of creating a space for dialogue and transformation is fundamentally feminist and we have seen women creating spaces to share their stories as early as Sojourner Truth and Elizabeth Cady Stanton

(Carastathis, 2016; Stanton, 1848). Autoethnographic research as a method allows the author to make explicit the connections between the personal and political and acknowledges the validity of personal experiences. In this work I explore my positionality as a woman living in a gun culture. Given the spaces I occupy, I was a participant in the campus concealed carry phenomena even before I was aware that it was happening. I have intensified my role an active participant in gun culture during this research study, and this has allowed me to contribute my experiences to the broader conversation. How I experience campus concealed carry and gun culture is both

74 personal and political. It is impossible for me to talk or write about my experiences and beliefs about campus concealed carry without people taking my words to be part of a political statement.

Creating an Autoethnographic Study

Holman Jones (2016) writes that her commitment as a critical autoethnographer is to embody the change she wishes to see in the world. One of my greatest critiques of the guns on campus debate is the binary nature of the dominant discourse. People are either pro-gun or anti- gun, and there is very little attempt on the part of either camp to better understand the other side.

In this work I am attempting to better understand the complicated nuances of gun culture by interrogating various aspects of gun culture regardless of This has allowed me to interrogate the issue from multiple angles, including for example, exploring what it means when a Quaker pacifist takes a concealed carry course and discovers that shooting a hand gun provides a great deal of enjoyment?

Autoethnography allows us to create cultural commentary through personal experiences and narratives (Boylorne & Orbe, 2014). Part of engaging in cultural analysis is to immerse oneself in a culture. Here, autoethnography draws from the methods of traditional ethnographies, to consider what it means to live in a national gun culture. When I started this research project, I was already a participant in campus concealed carry simply by the nature of my position as a faculty member on a campus where concealed carry was legal. Once I determined that I wanted to make meaning of my experiences with campus concealed carry, that I needed to understand the broader social implications of the practice, I designed a series of field experiences that would allow me to further immerse myself not just in a local campus concealed carry place, but also in gun culture on a macro level. I also participated in gun culture on multiple occasions through no specific research design, but simply as a matter of chance. For example, I happened to be at my

75 children’s school during more than one active shooter drill, concerns about violence erupted in my academic classrooms, etc. The amount of times I had an experience related to gun culture or school violence by chance is in many ways indicative of the urgency of having a conversation about these topics, as they are shaping our culture in a variety of ways. Both designed and random experiences play a critical role in this work, as they are both indicative of the broader sociocultural context of guns in America. One cannot hope to understand campus concealed carry without considering the cultural context of guns in American society. Part of my goal in immersing myself further into gun culture was my need to shift from being a passive participant to active participation in the culture. As a woman with no criminal background and one who teaches on a rural campus where concealed carry is legal, I was positioned in a manner that allowed this shift to happen with little difficulty. In earlier chapters I have discussed how my privilege as a white, cis-gendered, heterosexual, middle class, well-educated, able-bodied woman who conforms to traditional feminine gender performativity factored into this process. Here I will outline the ways in which I participated in campus concealed carry and gun culture as both an active and passive participant or observer.

Fieldwork

My fieldwork for this project pre-dates the conception of the research – as I have already shared with the reader my interest in this topic was sparked when a student in my classroom implied a threat of violence to a pair of female classmates. Although I was not actively studying guns when this event happened, the event came to represent my first field observation of gun culture and I have chosen to write about the experience in this project. In the aftermath of this experience, I designed this research study to better understand what happened and to situate my

76 experience with guns on campus within the broader context of gun culture. I designed a series of opportunities for myself to immerse into gun culture, both on and off campus.

My first formal exercise in fieldwork was to attend a student-sponsored debate on the role of guns on campus. The event was sponsored by the campus political science club as part of their campus debate series. Monthly they invited students to discuss controversial political topics and I was pleased to see an opportunity for students to talk about guns on campus. The debate was primarily attended by students, overwhelmingly male, and many of whom had strong opinions either in support of or against guns on campus. This opened my eyes to wide variety of student opinions on the topic but also left me feeling dissatisfied by the lack of participation from female students. Of the small number of women who attended, only a few shared thoughts or opinions.

The next campus event that I attended was advertised to all faculty as a training on how to survive an active shooter on campus. The training was provided by a police officer and the information focused on the “Run, Hide, Fight” model of survival. This event is discussed at length in chapter five, but the take-away was that my survival in the event of an active shooter was entirely dependent upon my ability and willingness to fight to the death. This is where I was initially exposed to the cultural messaging around the good guy with a gun. The implications were unmistakable—I would only survive an active shooter if there were a “good guy with a gun” nearby to kill the bad guy with the gun. Although the good guy with a gun was never explicitly defined, it was implied that the “good guy” would be white, middle-class, able-bodied man. As soon as the good guy came up on conversation, I was curious to learn more about this imagined individual and what his relationship was to gun culture. I will discuss the good guy extensively in the next chapter. During this training, I also experienced a direct attack on my

77 spiritual ideologies as the instructor made several derogatory comments about people who practice pacifism. I was assured that if I held to my pacifist beliefs I was going to die.

During both the debate and the training, people made multiple references to the idea of a good guy with a gun, which is reflective of the broader dominant discourse regarding guns and who should have them. I decided that good guy with a gun needed to be further examined to enhance my understanding of gun culture. So, I decided to take the steps that are socially sanctioned to fill this role. I enrolled and completed both the basic and enhanced concealed carry permit courses that are required to obtain an enhanced concealed carry permit. After this, I took the next step and obtained a concealed carry permit valid in multiple states. These experiences had significant impact on my understanding of campus concealed carry, gun culture, and ultimately my own fundamental beliefs about the role of guns in society

After receiving my concealed carry license, I spent additional time exploring gun culture by attending a local gun show and practicing my newly developed skills with a handgun at a local gun range. To fully understand the good guy narrative, I originally intended to practice concealed carry while teaching classes on campus. I will discuss in the conclusion chapter of this text why I ultimately rejected this component of the research.

Lastly, in an effort to better understand many of the cultural messages I was receiving throughout this work, I spent a significant amount of time interacting with gun culture in online spaces. I spent a great deal of time reading information available through the NRA, and I discovered that the NRA has an online streaming channel dedicated to women. I spent many hours watching NRA television and advertising, specifically information targeted at women.

This helped me contextualize many of the messages about guns that are targeted at women and

78 focus on women’s need to protect themselves from sexual violence. This experience was highly impactful and had implications for my own mental health.

In addition to interacting with gun culture through online forums, I also started to interact with gun culture from a consumer perspective. I took several trips to stores that sell guns, visited with the sales people at the gun counter inquiring about their recommendations for a purchase, and in one instance “trying one on” by strapping it to my body with a holster recommended by the sales person. I also ventured into online spaces such as the Well-Armed Woman where I was met with a plethora of information about practicing concealed carry without sacrificing my stylish or form-fitted clothing. I was able to peruse hundreds of options for concealed carry purses, corsets, or other holsters specifically designed for women. Although the only purchase I made were bullets for the gun range, these shopping experiences both in-store and online, held their own degree of enlightenment.

In addition to these intentional experiences, I have also written in this work about various ways I have inadvertently found myself participating in gun culture. For example, twice over the course of this research project I found myself inside my children’s elementary school during an active-shooter lock down drill. Both experiences were uniquely different from one another, and both impacted me in varying ways. This speaks to the ways in which gun culture has permeated social structures and highlights how important it is to better understand the role of guns in society.

For this work I have also drawn on my experiences occupying space as a white woman on a campus where concealed carry is legal. I have experienced the impact of concealed carry policies from a variety of standpoints - as a white woman, as a professor, and as an activist. My encounters with the policy have taken place in both official and unofficial capacities. Through

79 this cultural immersion I was uniquely situated as an active participant in gun culture. This has allowed me to examine my personal experiences within the broader context of guns as a component of American culture, but also to situate my experiences within the more local landscapes of my campus and home communities. Although I started out asking questions about campus concealed carry in higher education, this work led me to interrogate my experiences with gun culture over the span of a lifetime. For example, my exposure to guns as a child has given me a very specific lens through which I view guns as an adult. My positionality in relationship to the mass shooting at Columbine High School has also become significant, as I am neither a part of the pre-Columbine, nor the Post Columbine generation. These additional considerations help contextualize my experiences with campus concealed carry by lending insight into how my views of guns and gun culture continue to be shaped by both personal and collective cultural experiences.

Many of these fieldwork experiences happened due to a snowball effect. For example, attending a concealed carry class led me to purchase ammunition, which led to a visit to the gun range. Visiting the gun range led me to visit online retailers who sell women’s concealed carry accessories. Other examples occurred in a less linear fashion. For example, after attending a concealed carry permit course, I was interested in better understanding the use of fear in gun- based curriculum. I turned to the NRA and spend a significant amount of time watching NRA

TV, specifically their advertising targeting women. I started by watching videos targeted to women interested in concealed carry, and I found myself watching a wide variety of NRA created propaganda and then speeches given by NRA leadership. Seeking additional contextualizing information about the broader culture of guns was critical to the success of my

80 ability to make meaning out of my experiences. Thus, the data was collected through multiple modalities and not always in a linear fashion.

Crafting a Narrative

During each of my experiences with fieldwork, data was collected through extensive note-taking. Certain events, such as formal classes or trainings, made it easy to take notes in real time. Other events, such as online shopping or visiting a gun show, were documented from memory after the event concluded. While I was typing my notes from the field, I flagged certain moments in time as being significant or worthy of further investigation. This helped cue me in to the parts of my experiences that might later be written into narratives. During this process I also took additional notes regarding questions I had about things I had experienced. In one instance I had noted several questions about the idea of the good guy with a gun, which then led me to further explore this cultural construct. Another part of my documentation process was to mark portions of my notes for follow-up. For example, during my concealed carry permit class the instructor had made several recommendations for websites that we might find useful. I flagged this type of recommendation in my notes and then followed-up with a visit to the web-site. In turn, I documented things I learned from the web-site as an extension of the original notes.

After I created field notes from my experiences, I considered which parts of my experiences should be turned into narratives. I started by writing very short vignettes that highlighted various aspects of my experiences. This is part of the process of living a “writing life” (Bochner & Ellis, 2016) and shifting towards the idea that “autoethnography is not so much a methodology as a way of life” (Bochner, 2013). Through the writing process I have come to better understand my experiences and how they are situated within the context American gun culture. I have also experienced a shift in my personal belief system regarding guns. Writing has

81 allowed me to fully process and articulate my experiences in a way that makes them available to the general population and not only for other academics.

Generally, I started by writing about the moments that felt most significant to me. In other cases, I wrote a vignette because I felt like it highlighted an aspect of gun culture. Some of the stories were later expanded into more detailed accounts of the event, and other vignettes were stitched together to create a longer narrative. Over the course of this project, I wrote about twenty-five narratives that highlighted my experiences. I spent a great deal of time reading them out loud and reading them to other people. For me, a part of the writing process, was to observe how my stories were perceived by or impacted others. I often asked the listener to tell me what they thought about the purpose of the narrative, and this helped me understand how my stories might be interpreted by people from a variety of backgrounds.

Eventually I started the process of selecting narratives to be included in the final work.

The number of narratives was untenable for a single research study, but some of the narratives were easily identified as being peripheral to the core of the work. As a result, several narratives were excluded from the final work merely because they would not have contributed substance to the work. The gun-vendor offering my son a flame-thrower is one example of this – although it is an interesting moment, and the narrative offers the reader a lot to think about, it did not feel central to the work in the same way other narratives did. Other narratives were excluded for ethical reasons. For example, some of the narratives were only useful to the work if they were told in a way that highlighted specific interactions, I had with people whose identities could not necessarily be concealed or altered. There were a few extraordinarily interesting people that I met in the field who exemplified a variety of caricatures of the people most invested in gun culture. However, in order to share these narratives, I would have been forced to change

82 significant and important details about a person in order to obscure their identities and changing these details would have diminished the experience as well as the person. This was disappointing, and I did entertain the idea of combining several of these people into one caricature for a fictional narrative. But again, this did not feel central to this work. However, these narratives may make an appearance later in a free-standing article.

Once I had excluded a series of narratives from the work, I examined closely the narratives that were left. I wanted to select narratives that would serve a two-fold purpose. Each narrative needed to represent a stand-alone story, while simultaneously working as a piece of a bigger narrative. Although each narrative was crafted as a stand-alone story, I selected narratives that when placed together inside of the dissertation would each represent a piece of a much bigger story. I wanted the narratives to tell my story – starting with my first introduction to the idea that students were practicing concealed carry in my classes and following me through my immersive experiences.

Although I could include a section in this chapter that details my thought process in writing each individual narrative that you will read in chapter four, I have not done so. Instead, in chapter four the reader can find this information following each narrative or set of narratives. I chose to include this aspect of my methodology alongside the narratives to help the reader better understand my thought processes prior to reading my analysis of the incident. This was a stylistic choice, but one that I believe allows the reader more insight into how I was impacted by the experiences detailed in the narrative. By coupling the narrative with a description of the writing process, instead of presenting this in two separate chapters, the reader gains additional insight into both the process of writing and the impacts of the experience on the author.

Validity and Reliability

This research study relies on the lived experiences of the author, situated within sociocultural contexts, to provide the reader with an in depth look at various aspects of gun culture. In chapter four, the reader can expect a series of four vignettes that detail these lived experiences, followed by an analysis of how the experiences highlight key components of gun culture. The analysis is rooted in extensive research of and interaction with gun culture in a variety of forms. Sociocultural context has been explored through extensive reviews of the published literature on the topic, interaction with gun culture in various spaces, reviews of formal social policy and mass media news coverage of the topics. The reader will find I have laid out a series of emergent topics or themes that repeat themselves within these different avenues for understanding gun culture. For example, one of my vignettes examines the construction of vulnerability as inherently feminine. This theme emerges not only in my lived experiences, but it comes up in the propaganda disseminated by the NRA, political talking points in favor of promoting pro-gun policies, and within existing literature on gun culture (Blair & Hyatt, 1995;

Carlson, 2013, 2015; Hollander, 2001; Lopes, 2015). Highlighting these patterns by utilizing multiple sources of data lends both validity and reliability to the study.

Ethical Considerations/Positionality.

Although traditional research projects would use an Institutional Review Board (IRB) as a measure of ethical oversight, this is not currently required for autoethnographic work at

Washington State University or Lewis-Clark State College. Bochner and Ellis (2016) discuss the historic relationship between IRB and autoethnography at length in their book Evocative

Autoethnography. When they first started writing and publishing ethnographies, they found they were answering increasingly irrelevant questions regarding their studies to appease the IRB.

Eventually, they note that autoethnographic research ceased to fall under the purview of an IRB because “autoethnographers do not seek ‘systematic’ and ‘generalizable’ knowledge” (Bochner

& Ellis, 2016). They do, however, emphasize that “ethics boards have nothing to do with deciding whether a method is valid” (Ellis & Bochner, 2016, p. 145). Where the IRB is concerned “their role is to protect human subjects and to ensure that the university is not vulnerable to a lawsuit” (Ellis & Bochner, 2016, p. 145). Although this work did not undergo review by an Institutional Review Board, I spent a significant amount of time discussing the research design with members of my dissertation committee and examining potential ethical conflicts that might arise and working to minimize concerns.

Relational ethics is a topic that comes up in any autoethnographic research study.

Because I have written about my personal lived experiences, other people are often implicated in this writing. For example, I often write about my husband and my children who play a recurrent part in my lived experiences. It is impossible to obscure the nature of these relationships without significantly altering the meaning in the stories. This creates a situation in which their identities become known or are easy to ascertain based on their relationship to the author. In order to minimize this consideration, the author can ask individuals to read the work and engage in dialogue with the author about how they have been represented. In my work presented here, this ethical consideration is further complicated because my children are often implicated in my work. Additionally, one of my children is intellectually disabled and non-verbal making it impossible for her to engage in this process in a meaningful way. As their parents, my husband and I have often discussed how and where my children are represented within this work. I have taken care to represent other individuals only in relationship to my lived experiences and have refrained from commenting on the ways in which they might have interpreted our shared

85 experiences. I have made commentary on their interpretations only where I have had conversations with the individual regarding how they had interpreted their experiences.

CHAPTER FIVE: ANALYSIS

Throughout this research process I spent a great deal of time in the field immersing myself in gun culture, the culture of guns on campus, and the world of campus concealed carry.

In the end, I wrote the following short stories or narratives detailing my experiences from a first- person perspective. This chapter represents the culmination of two years of data collection and analysis. The narratives I have selected are representative of the key themes I would like to highlight and most thoroughly answer my initial research question. My research question asked:

1) How have I experienced the implementation of campus concealed carry from my position as a female faculty member working on a campus where concealed carry has been legalized? 2)How have I as a white, able-bodied, cisgender, middle-class, woman experienced gun culture or gun- friendly spaces? How have these experiences shaped my understanding of gun culture in the

United States of America. 3) What is the relationship between my personal experiences as a participant in gun culture and American gun culture in general?

The first and second narratives presented here explicitly address my personal experience with campus concealed carry, and both take place on the campus where I work. The third and fourth narratives presented both share my experiences attending the basic and enhanced concealed carry permit courses required to obtain a concealed carry permit. All four narratives are presented in italics to allow the reader to discern narrative from analysis. Each narrative is followed by a brief overview of the writing process, and an in-depth analysis of the themes that emerge from the specific narrative, followed with connections to the broader implications of campus concealed carry policies. Although there are four narratives, this chapter is divided up into three major sections. The first and third sections showcase one narrative, but the second section highlights back-to-back narratives that examine similar themes. Narratives are presented

87 in chronological order, starting with my earliest experience with campus concealed carry and taking the reader all the way through my exploration of becoming a “good guy” with a gun. Each section highlights a variety of key themes that have emerged from this work. The first narrative presented Armed with More than Knowledge, introduces the reader to the very moment that my interest in guns on campus was piqued.

Armed with More than Knowledge

It was my first-year teaching full time in a tenure track position. Students in one of my

Social Work courses were giving presentations on issues related to poverty, and many students had opted to share personal experiences. One woman shared what rampant poverty can look like growing up on Indigenous Reservation Lands, or as she referred to them – the Rez. Another spoke about the ways she was exploited while working as a migrant laborer alongside her parents in the farming industry. After class these two women approached me and asked if I could stay after, and then they asked the two young, white, men seated directly behind me if they would stay as well. I was still new to teaching and the nature of their request made me feel apprehensive. I didn’t know why they wanted to meet, and I didn’t know why they wanted additional students to stay. After the classroom emptied, the older of the two women extended her hand to one of the men, introduced herself, identified herself as being Native American – and then she asked him if he had a problem with her race. I caught my breath. The direct nature of her comment and the look on the young man’s face left little doubt that whatever this was, it was about to escalate. The second she finished her sentence I noted the young man shifting his weight to an aggressive stance. Then I noticed only one hand had formed a fist. The other was hovering just above his hip.

Shit.

He has a gun.

My brain immediately conjured an image of two dead women of color, shot by a young white man with a gun, because he was uncomfortable being confronted with his own racism. I panicked, and I wasn’t alone. The students who had requested the meeting also sensed the hostility of their peers and shifted their approach to be less confrontational. The quieter of the two women took several steps back, put her hands in front of herself, and made a little joke to soften the mood. I stepped between the student groups and faced the young man. I asked everybody to consider waiting until after class the following week to have this conversation, hoping that tempers would cool with time and space. The truth is that I was simply unprepared to navigate this situation, and I didn’t know how to create a safe space for this conversation to happen.

About two hours after class, the young man involved appeared in the doorway of my office. He can only be described as rageful. He was angry, hostile, and he wanted somebody to pay for what he felt was an attack on his person.

He asked me to help him pursue disciplinary action against the woman who accused him of being racist – he assured me, he did not have a racist bone in his body. I tried to have a constructive conversation with him that would help him acknowledge how why his actions had been interpreted as discriminatory.

He did agree, yes he had been making faces at the women while they were presenting. Yes, he had only been making faces at the women of color. But no, that did not make him racist and anybody who made that accusation against him should be punished. I didn’t push the issue with him. The idea that he might have a gun, and that he was blocking the only way out of my office,

89 compelled me to remain mostly silent. He returned to my office several times throughout the semester, and each time he presented himself he was angrier and more hostile.

The women also visited my office that day and throughout the semester, and although they were hurt and angry they came seeking comfort rather than vengeance. They didn’t ask that the student be removed from my class, they didn’t ask that he be sent anywhere for punishment. They simply wanted to process what had been a very painful experience. They came to talk to me because when they had tried to talk to the aggressor, they had been completely shut down by his anger and the threat of violence. In the end, they each expressed that they were more upset by his response to being confronted than they were by the original incident.

Narrating an Incident

A few years after this incident happened, I was still ruminating on the “what-ifs” of the situation. What if the situation hadn’t de-escalated? What if the student had pulled out a gun?

What if somebody had died? At the time I was also working my way through a doctoral program, and I had been invited by faculty to give them an update on where I was in my studies. During the meeting I told them that I felt my dissertation topic was evolving, and I recounted the story presented here. It was the first time I had shared this experience out loud, and in doing so I realized that the story had potential to be both powerful and transformative. Sharing the story held the possibility of serving as a catalyst for other people to consider the broader implications of campus concealed carry policies. One of the faculty members present told me that this story – just the way I had shared it with them, could be written as the introduction to a dissertation on the topic. Other faculty encouraged me to consider the timeliness of the topic, given the ever- increasing number of active shooters on campus and the lack of research on the subject. It

90 seemed like an ideal topic for somebody like me, who was uniquely situated as an active participant in the implementation of campus concealed carry policies, to explore.

This story is written exactly the way I remember the incident unfolding in real time. I share it here for several reasons. Although the story invites the reader into my classroom as a witness to the incident, it is also loosely constructed, and the reader may find themselves asking questions about the scene. Does the student really have a gun? Was the author reading too much into the students’ actions? Was there really a possibility of somebody getting shot? If the reader is asking these questions, they would not be alone – I spent several months playing and replaying this scene inside my head trying to figure out if my concerns had been justified. Writing about it has helped me better understand both what I experienced in the moment, and in the aftermath. In the end, I decided that whether the student had a gun was irrelevant. The tension in the air was real, and the threat of guns on campus is simply an ever-present reality in today’s era of mass school shootings. This is particularly true on a campus where concealed carry is legal. This story illustrates the questions that linger in my mind all the time – do any of the students in my classroom have a gun and if they do, are they going to use it if they are confronted with an idea that makes them uncomfortable or angry?

Situating a Story in Time and Place

In order to make meaning of the presence of guns on campus we need to situate the narrative within time and place. When campus concealed carry was made legal on the campus where the story takes place, it had been fifteen years since the mass shooting at Columbine, and seven years since the Virginia Tech Massacre (Birnbaum, 2013; Brady Center to Prevent Gun

Violence, 2007). As I have already outlined in chapter two, the shooting at Columbine introduced the idea that children can murder each other in High Schools (Birnbaum, 2013) and

91 the shootings at Virginia Tech moved the conversation to include institutions of higher education

(Birnbaum, 2013). By the time the state of Idaho passed campus concealed carry legislation in

2014 (Legislature of the State of Idaho), school shootings had become normalized and frequent.

This environment lends credibility to lawmakers who argue that there is a measure of urgency in addressing student safety. As a result, every time there is another mass shooting, we see a correlational increase in legislation that makes guns more accessible and advocates the elimination of gun-free spaces (Fox & DeLateur, 2013; Perez, 2017). Understanding that we live in a post-Columbine and post-Virginia Tech era is critical for understanding how institutions are responding to the threat of campus shooters. The public discourse around campus shooters no longer asks if there will be another school shooting, but rather asks when and where it will happen. This speaks to the macro context of guns on campus.

On a micro level, I need to situate the decision to legalize campus concealed carry in a more local context. In 2018, Idaho was ranked tenth in the country for most guns per capita, and number one in the country for being most economically dependent on the gun industry (McCann,

2018). There are multiple gun and ammunition manufacturers that operate within the state, and roughly 6,800 people are employed by the industry (McCann, 2018). Nez Perce County, where I teach, is currently ranked at number three in the entire country for the most heavily armed county based on the percentage of people who keep guns in their homes per capita (Staff Writer, 2017).

Given this environment, it has become my practice to simply assume there is always at least one person in the room who is practicing concealed carry.

Dismantling Presumed Power Hierarchies in the Classroom

Intersectional feminism is fundamentally interested in deconstructing power hierarchies

(Cooper, 2016). Traditional wisdom about academic spaces situates the professor as the person

92 with the most power in a classroom. Ladson-Billings (1996) challenges this assumption, writing extensively about the role of race in the classroom and asserting that for faculty of color, white supremacy shifts the differential of power. I build on her work to posit that the presence of guns in the classroom shifts the power dynamic in a similar manner. This narrative illustrates that for me, as a white woman professor, the threat of guns in my classroom diminished my ability to create a safe space for learning and by extension granted students power over me. The narrative also highlights the way in which race further impacts this dynamic. For the women of color students in my class, their ability to vocalize concerns about the racist actions of their peers was diminished by the threat of gun-based violence. Vocal opponents of campus concealed carry policies often express concern that guns in the classroom will limit freedom of speech. The belief is that students will feel less inclined to share their opinion on controversial topics if they are concerned that their classmates are armed (Gose, 2002). This story highlights the way this can happen in an academic classroom. Students wanted to express their opinion on their classmates’ disrespectful actions but were shut down through the threat of violence.

This narrative highlights my personal experiences, but as a white woman I cannot speak to how women of color faculty might have experienced a similar situation. However, I return to the work of Ladson-Billings (2006) who highlighted the ways in which white supremacy functions to diminish the power of faculty in the classroom. Other studies explore the ways in which gun ownership is often a status symbol used by white men to reproduce white privilege; further, they explore the ways in which white gun-owners often use racially coded language to justify hostility and even violence towards people of color (Bankston et al, 1990; Hollander,

2001; Stroud, 2012, Carlson, 2015). Given this relationship between guns, white supremacy, and white privilege, it is highly problematic that faculty of color to have the potential for armed

93 white students in their classes. The threat of guns in the classrooms carries a significant racial tension for faculty of color wherein they are potentially subject to the simultaneous dangers of white supremacy, the threat of gun violence, and the prospect of gun violence being used to enact white supremacy. Thus, we can look at guns in the classroom from both a perspective of gender or race as distinct categories, or from a perspective of gender and race as intersecting identities.

A Teacher Changed

After the incident described in the narrative, I completely changed the way I was teaching the class. Prior to the incident, my curriculum was driven by student interaction and opportunity for debate. Due to the nature of the topic, the curriculum was full of subjects that are often considered controversial. After the incident, I eliminated any and all opportunity for students to interact with each other or share their opinions. I came to class prepared to lecture non-stop for the entirety of the two hours and forty-five minutes allotted. I cannot speak for the students and whether they felt inclined to share opinions, because I never gave them the opportunity to do so. My teaching changed out of fear that somebody might brandish a weapon, and I fully acknowledge that students were deprived of valuable learning opportunities as a result. Although rhetoric typically focuses on student’s freedom of speech, I offer that we should be equally concerned that the potential for guns in the classroom will make faculty feel less inclined to teach controversial subject matter as well as engage students in class discussions.

This, by extension, diminishes opportunities for students to learn and engage in a variety of important subject matters.

The power dynamic in my classroom was permanently shifted by this incident. As the semester progressed, the classroom environment deteriorated. Students split themselves into two factions, those who supported the women of color and those who supported the white men. The

94 groups created a physical barrier between themselves by sitting on opposite sides of the classroom. It became clear through the thinly veiled references and jokes being made that there were several students in the room who had weapons, and it was clear from their before-class conversations they wanted people to be aware they were practicing concealed carry. I read the room as a powder keg of emotions ready to explode, and I was terrified.

Who has power in a classroom where some people have guns, and other people do not?

My experiences illustrate how traditional power hierarchies in a classroom can be subverted in multiple ways. As a female faculty member, male students often challenge my authority with sexist comments. For example, a student once referred to me as a girly little girl while asking for an extension on a paper. As a young faculty member, students often become fixated on my age as a way of diminishing my credentials. Recently, a student insisted that I must belong to her millennial generation, because I can’t possibly be any older, or more educated, than she was.

When students fill out course evaluations, they can exert power over a professor by writing a bad review which in turn impacts tenure and promotion opportunities. However, there is a distinct difference between a student making a sexist comment and a student bringing a gun to class. I might be inclined to call out a sexist comment. A bad teaching evaluation will likely be countered by a positive one. But when students with guns exert power in a classroom, what action can or should faculty reasonably take?

The story Armed with More than Knowledge is ultimately an exploration of how power functions in an academic classroom. In the narrative, power shifts between students and professor depending on time and context. In the beginning, the professor is assumed to have power by the students who approached me, asking that I participate in the confrontation. There was an implicit assumption that I would support the female students in confronting the young

95 men. The young men responded with an implied threat of violence, shifting power away from their peers and from the professor. Ultimately, I was able to regain some power by shutting the conversation down, if only temporarily. Power dynamics continued to shift throughout the semester as students visited my office or engaged the support of their peers. As a white woman, I also have to ask the question of what would have been different if I had been a woman of color?

Would I have so easily been able to de-escalate the situation? Would things have ended differently? It is impossible to know, but one can reasonably assert that it is likely the shifting power dynamics would have looked different had I not been a white woman.

Traditional wisdom suggests that within a student/professor relationship it is the professor who holds most of the power. This belief rests on the assumption that the professor is considered an expert who holds control over a student’s grades, which potentially impacts a student’s future success. However, as this narrative highlights, this is an overly simplistic way of thinking about power hierarchies. Ascribing to the idea that professors always have power over students ignores significant external factors that can impact the dynamics inside a classroom.

Institutional racism, white supremacy, and patriarchy are always at play and the academic classroom is no exception. Students often shift the differential of power into their own favor through expressions of racism when working with faculty of color, or sexism when working with female faculty. Female faculty of color can experience simultaneous and overlapping sexism and racism from their students. The implementation of guns in the classroom has significant potential to exacerbate the impact of racism and sexism as dominant forms of social power and are most certainly more influential than any power presumed to be held by faculty solely based on their position as an academic.

This narrative also highlights the power of implied violence, showcasing how there does not need to be an actual gun in the classroom present to re-shape classroom dynamics. In gun culture you often hear rhetoric that positions people with guns as active participants in gun culture. For example, later in this work I will explore my experiences attending a training on how to survive an ‘active shooter.’ I have already written about how my children have ‘active shooter’ drills at their school to prepare them for survival in the event of a mass shooting. The dominant discourse typically frames gun violence as active, which in many ways minimizes the role of implied violence in gun culture. The narrative Armed with More than Knowledge highlights the ways in which the implication of a gun being present shapes human interactions and group dynamics. It was not necessary for the gun to play an active role – in this narrative the gun instead was a passive or implied object. Given this, I posit the conversation around active shooters should be expanded to include potential shooters. If our society is serious about preventing mass shootings from happening, it makes sense to shift our focus from the active shooter to the potential shooter. Once an individual decides to shift from carrying a weapon to shooting a weapon, we have lost our window for prevention of violence. In my personal experience, nobody ever brandished or fired a weapon and for this I am grateful. However, the implied presence of a weapon and the threat of violence still caused damage to my students, my classroom, and myself.

Changing the Culture of Higher Education

As educators, I believe our role is to ensure students are receiving the highest quality of education possible. As mass shootings become more common, we are moving into a world where the safety of students is an increasingly critical component of the job. Maintaining a classroom culture that fosters brave spaces for learning becomes more difficult when guns are introduced.

This becomes increasingly difficult when you teach controversial subject matter, or if you are teaching in a discipline that requires a significant shift in the way your students view and/or interact with the world. As a professor of social work, I spend a great deal of time challenging foundational beliefs that my students have about the world and moving them towards a more socially aware perspective. At the same time, I teach at an institution located in a county that ranks number three in the entire nation for most guns per citizen (Staff Writer, 2017). This is a frightening juxtaposition. While it is my job to facilitate student introspection of their own strongly held cultural beliefs, it is their prerogative to carry a concealed weapon to my class.

Armed with More than Knowledge highlights one real-world example of the ways in which the presence of guns, both real or perceived, in a classroom can have significant impact on campus culture and classroom pedagogy.

The Relationship Between Surviving an Active Shooter and Concealed Carry

Campus cultures are responding to the epidemic of school shooters in a variety of ways.

This next story explores the implications of the decision made by some states to legalize campus concealed carry as a solution. Some institutions, including Washington State University where I am currently a doctoral student, are adding active shooter clauses to their syllabi. Trainings on how to survive an active shooter have become common place. At the same time, trainings on what to do in the event of a student using the implied presence of a gun in the classroom to intimidate or threaten people remain conspicuously absent from the broader conversation.

Regardless, when the opportunity to attend a training on how to survive an active shooter presented itself to me, I took it. I attended in equal parts due to my curiosity about how one is expected to secure their survival in the event of an active shooter, and as an opportunity to better understand the culture of guns on campus. Part of my experience with this training is presented

98 here in the narrative Surviving an Active Shooter. During the training, both trainer and attendees made references to the idea that a ‘Good Guy with a Gun’ was our best hope of surviving a mass shooting. The idea of a ‘Good Guy with a Gun’ came up in all aspects of my research on guns and struck me as a social construct worthy of further investigation. The good guy is often used as a coded reference to a man with a concealed carry weapon who would appear in the event of an active shooter. The good guy would shoot the shooter and become a hero in the process.

Although the good guy is not an actual designation one can obtain through a concealed carry class, possessing a concealed carry permit and practicing concealed carry appear to be necessary pre-requisites for positioning yourself to be a good guy if and when one finds themselves in the midst of an active shooter scenario.

I decided to immerse myself further into gun culture by attempting to qualify myself as a

‘good guy with a gun’ or at least a version of the ‘good guy’, as my identity as a woman appears to disqualify me from fulfilling the role in its entirety. In order to mimic the ‘good guy’ I enrolled in a concealed carry permit course and obtained a concealed carry permit. I have placed a narrative from my concealed carry course, Ghost Stories, in this section. This narrative provides an opportunity to deconstruct the social construct of the ‘good guy with a gun’ and examine several of the assumptions embedded in this descriptor. Both narratives presented in this section share my experiences attending classes related to gun culture, and the juxtaposition of these narratives highlights several similarities in the way American culture talks about guns and gun violence.

Surviving an Active Shooter

When I arrived at the training, I could see through a glass window in the door a power point queued up on a large projector screen, and I initially thought I had come to the wrong

99 room. The presentation was titled, in huge bold letters - WE WILL WIN!!! After wandering around the building for a few minutes thinking I must have been in the wrong place, I returned to the initial room to find it was the correct location. The training was sponsored by the nursing division on campus and was supposed to teach faculty how to survive in the event of an active shooter. The facilitator was a School Resource Officer at a large High School. He presented as a white man and was wearing his uniform with a gun was clearly visible in his hip holster. A quick scan of the room showed most attendees were women, but there were several men in the audience as well. Participants represented a variety of academic disciplines and included faculty, staff, and students. Most of the men in attendance identified as working for maintenance or facility operations, but I recognized a few who were professors. Before the presentation began, the officer in charge made a request of the audience that we all agree on one thing: violence can happen anywhere, anytime, to anyone. We are all potential victims of mass gun violence right here and right now. People agreed, but most shifted uncomfortably in their seats.

The tone was sober.

The first thirty minutes of the presentation was dedicated exclusively to talking about every separate school shooting since 1995. With painstaking detail, we were told how many shooters were involved and how many people were injured or killed. The officer offered his post- incident insight into each shooting and what could or should have been done differently by students, teachers, and law enforcement. We were told that the typical response time for police was almost five minutes. We were also told that in five minutes the average active shooter has already fired over 500 rounds of ammunition. The atmosphere went from dark to darker. People were becoming increasingly somber and the room was thick with anxiety, sadness, and tension. I

100 imagine, like myself, people were wondering how long this list of tragedies was and wishing it would end.

When the officer reviewed the mass murder at Columbine High School – the first big news school shooting, but not the first school shooting, my mind instantly took me back to my

High School gymnasium the day after the shooting. I attended high school about 700 miles away from Columbine, the highly publicized event affected our community regardless of distance. The principal called an emergency assembly. Everyone was shook. This was the first time most of us had ever considered the possibility of a school shooting, and nobody really knew how to make sense of the news. Stories about two kids dressed in Black shooting up their school cafeteria were everywhere. Our community was full of rumors and speculation – it was still too early; we didn’t know then what we know now about how well planned and executed the attack was. The dominant narrative that day was that the shooters were social outcasts who had been bullied to the point of murder. During the assembly the principal and school counselor called 17 random kids from the bleachers to join them on the gym floor. Then they asked the student body to imagine that these 17 friends were dead. Gone. Shot and killed. I was one of the kids standing on the gym floor. I was also a sensitive 16-year-old girl, and the only thing I really remember after that was sobbing so hard my best friend came down from the bleachers and took me to the locker room while I recovered.

When the “We Will Win!!!” trainer reached the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary school where so many tiny, defenseless children were murdered, several people in the room began to audibly cry. When this history lesson finally ended, everyone was eager to move on.

After all, we hadn’t come to hear the tragic history that most of us already knew, and some of us had already lived. Rather, we wanted to learn how to protect ourselves from the same violent

101 death suffered by the lengthy list of victims we had just reviewed. I was starting to feel paranoid about my safety on campus and found myself repeatedly looking over my shoulder to make sure nobody that could be dangerous had entered the room. The memory of guns in my own classroom was still fresh, and I felt like I had already survived one brush with a potential shooter. I wasn’t eager to re-live the experience.

I expected that once everybody in attendance was sufficiently terrified, the officer would proceed to teaching us everything we needed to know about how to survive an active shooter. I am not entirely sure this happened, but he did review the predominant model for survival: run, hide, fight. He gave some helpful hints about hiding, and encouraged people to turn out the lights, hide their backpacks, and to spread themselves around the room. He told us never to hide in groups because if a shooter did come into the room, they would likely just kill us all in a terrifying hail of bullets aimed directly at the center of the mass. That was a horrifying image.

Mostly, the officer focused his time and energy on telling us how important it would be to fight.

The title of his presentation was pointed – We Will Win!!! was not a metaphor. In his mind, an active shooter on campus is a war in which the entirety of the campus community is pitted against the active shooter. Never mind that the shooter would likely be better armed and would have the element of surprise. He repeatedly encouraged participants to "never lay down and die" and "be willing to fight to the death." The officer made it very clear that any belief in pacifism was tantamount to signing your own death certificate – pacifism, he claimed, is for pussies. As a pacifist, I felt a little stung by his clear disdain for anyone who felt unwilling or unable to shoot to kill. Winning was the only option - and winning meant taking out the shooter at all costs. He singled out people who practice pacifism and indicated anybody who wished to cling to their pacifist beliefs would likely be the first to die. I thought about trying to engage him in a dialogue

102 about pacifism and why people like myself choose to practice the belief but decided this was neither the time nor the place for a constructive conversation.

After the presentation was concluded, the officer opened the room for questions. I raised my hand and asked him if he would share his thoughts on the new policy allowing students, faculty, and community members to carry concealed weapons on campus. The discovery that students in my classes were practicing concealed carry still felt like a fresh wound; it was festering, and I hadn’t really regained my feeling of campus being a safe place. I told him that I personally feel more concerned about a student becoming upset during a class, or in my office, and pulling out a gun impulsively. I am less concerned about an active shooter coming to campus with a premeditated plan. What advice would he offer in this scenario? The officer shared with the group that he has mixed feelings about guns on campus. He expressed his hope that people who choose to concealed carry would be responsible gun owners, and in the event of a student pulling out a gun in the middle of class, he hoped there would be more than one student with a weapon. He opined that we should all just pray that the good guy shoots the bad buy before the bad guy shoots everybody else. There he was, the good guy with a gun. He had come up in my research before and was already on my mind. I made a mental list of all the students who were currently enrolled in my courses and I shuddered to think about any of them having the sole responsibility of carrying a weapon to keep all of us safe. Most of my students are barely able to manage course readings and turning assignments in on time; being the ‘good guy’ seemed like an unreasonable request.

Ghost Stories

When I arrived at the concealed carry course bright and early on a Saturday morning, I honestly had no idea what to expect. I certainly didn’t expect a power outage to occur five

103 minutes before class started. Luckily, we were in a sporting goods store, and the staff took a trip down the camping aisle and set it up so we could learn about concealed carry by lantern-light.

The power didn’t come on until about two hours into class which created a unique environment where everything felt a little more intense than it probably should have. The class started with a dramatic re-telling of the women who filed the lawsuit Warren v. District of Columbia (1981).

The lawsuit was filed after two armed robbers broke into a home where three women and a child were living. Even though the police were contacted twice, the women were never assisted by the authorities and experienced an extended period of torture and rape. (Warren v. Columbia, 444

A.2d. 1) They survived the incident and filed a lawsuit claiming the police had failed to protect them when they did not respond to the victims’ calls for help. The case is significant in that

“both complaints were dismissed on the theory that there was no special duty to the individual plaintiffs, and a government [*6] and its agents are under no duty to provide police protection to members of the public at large” (Warren v. District of Columbia, 1981, p.3). The trainer in my course interpreted this finding to mean the police do not have an obligation to protect us if we are inside our own homes. As I sat there in the dark room, listening to the instructor tell this story as the lantern light flickered around his face, I could feel the hair on the back of my neck standing up. I am not sure if the story was intended to make us feel afraid, but as one of the only women in the room, I certainly felt singled out as I witnessed first-hand vulnerability and victimhood being constructed as a women’s issue. I spent roughly six hours that day learning about the benefits of concealed carry and during this time, I heard several more stories about women being raped or murdered—all because they did not have access to a firearm.

When I got home, the first thing I did was look up further information on some of the stories that had been shared. I wanted to understand if they had been taken out of context, or if

104 the trainer was correct in his interpretation that the police have no duty to protect us. It only took a few minutes before I came across an NRA web-site specifically for women who are afraid and want to be armed. There is an entire section of the NRA website titled “Refuse To be a

Victim”(Collins, N.D.). The first time I clicked on this section, there was a video prominently displayed that tells the story of a young woman brutally raped in a parking garage on her college campus. In the aftermath, she has become an advocate for gun rights, and specifically for the ability of individuals to practice concealed carry on college campuses. In the video, she emphatically tells the viewer that if she had a gun in her car when she was assaulted, she has no doubt she would have found a way to get the gun and shoot her attacker. Guns, she implies, are the only way for women to ensure their safety (www.nrawomen.tv).

I heard the message, loud and clear, from multiple directions. Women – your safety is up to you, and you alone. There is always a rapist lurking in the bushes and unless you have a gun, you won’t be safe. Gun ownership offers solution – you can simply refuse to be a victim.

Refusing to be a victim means carrying a gun and shooting anybody who threatens you. If you don’t want to carry a gun, the alternative is to stay home. Be hidden. This reminds me of the ghost stories we tell children to frighten them into behaving a certain way. But instead of threatening children with ghosts, we are threatening women with the very real and tragic stories of rape and sexual violence as a way of controlling their movements and their choices.

Learning through Writing

After attending the training on how to survive an active shooter, I spent several days thinking about it before writing a first draft. Then, through the process of reading, re-reading, and re-drafting the narrative I began to make meaning of what I had experienced. This process revealed three critical components of the story that will be further discussed here. These

105 components include the implementation of campus concealed carry policies as a codification of the idea that surviving an active shooter is an individual rather than institutional responsibility; the framing of survival as synonymous with winning; and the use of fear-based curriculum.

Additionally, this narrative introduces the idea of a good guy with a gun which is further discussed at length in the next section of this chapter.

As I was writing an analysis of Surviving an Active Shooter, the narrative Ghost Stories was heavy on my mind. Although I had originally decided not to use that narrative in this work, I included it here for a variety of reasons. The narrative Ghost Stories illustrates an additional experience I had with formal training or education on guns. It feels like a concealed carry permit class was a logical next step in extending my exploration of surviving an active shooter and further exploring the mythical good guy with a gun presented in the active shooter survival class.

These two stories presented side by side allow me to explore the ways in which they are similar, and different. Ghost Stories and Surviving an Active Shooter both highlight the ways in which survival is framed as an individual responsibility, the use of fear-based curriculum, and the idea that survival is in some way synonymous with winning. They differ in that one trainer framed vulnerability as inherently feminine, while the other framed vulnerability as random and unpredictable. Both trainers relied heavily on traditional gender stereotypes while discussing the idea that a good guy with a gun is integral in keeping communities safe. The construct of a good guy with a gun will be discussed at length in the next section of this chapter. In this section, I will further analyze these emergent themes and discuss their relationship to the dominant cultural discourses around campus concealed carry and the presence of guns in public spaces.

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The Ever-Increasing Availability of Guns

As I have already outlined in chapter two, it is not uncommon in the aftermath of a mass school shooting to see a spike in legislation that either makes guns more accessible or eliminates gun-free spaces (Perez, 2017). In 2008, just one year after the massacre at Virginia Tech, 17 states introduced legislation to legalize guns on campus (Bennett, Kraft, & Grubb, 2012).

Another spike in pro-gun policy occurred in the wake of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary

School with five states introducing legislation making it legal for K-12 staff and teachers to carry concealed weapons (Kralik & Erwin, 2018). In the wake of the recent shootings at Marjorie

Stoneman Douglas High School, the state of Florida is working to pass legislation that will pay for faculty to obtain concealed carry training and place armed individuals in every school

(Mazzei, 2018). The narrative of the good guy with a gun plays a significant role in supporting guns on campus legislation. President Donald Trump, in the aftermath of the shootings at

Stoneman Douglas, was quoted as saying “if you had a teacher who was adept with the firearm, they could end the attack very quickly” (Merica & Klein, 2018). When campus concealed carry policies were passed in the state of Idaho, local law enforcement representatives were quoted as saying “there are a lot of concealed weapons permit holders out there, and the reason they get that is because they want to protect themselves. They don’t want to be caught in a fishbowl if there’s an active shooter” (Frizell, 2014; Renneker, 2014). In a rare example of the gun owner being explicitly defined as female, a congresswoman from Nevada argued in favor of guns on campus to handle the sexual assault crisis. She was quoted as saying “If these young, hot little girls on campus have a firearm, I wonder how many men will want to assault them? These sexual assaults that are occurring would go down once these predators have a bullet in their head”

(Lopes, 2015). In this example, it should be noted that it is not expected that a girl with a gun

107 protect her classmates from an active shooter, but rather protect herself from a sexual predator. I will discuss this dynamic further in my analysis of the next narrative. Regardless, all this rhetoric in favor of increasing access to guns relies on the assumption that the students who choose to conceal carry will be responsible gun owners. Embedded in this rhetoric is the assumption that concealed carry permit holders will only use their guns for self-defense. Although research on who is most likely to carry weapons on campus does not affirm the idea that they are responsible individual’s adept at using weapons, the idea that concealed carry permit holders are the most law abiding remains pervasive (Bouffard, Nobles, Wells, & Cavanaugh, 2012; Lewis et. Al,

2015; Miller, Hemenway, & Wechsler, 1999). Social discourse repeatedly implies that the good guy with a gun will be able and willing to take on the role of protecting themselves or their classmates from an active shooter.

The Relationship Between Survival and Winning

The wide-spread use of active-shooter survival trainings, the implementation of active shooter clauses in syllabi, and the proliferation of policies legalizing campus concealed carry all speak to a larger social problem. As a culture, these examples highlight how we have shifted the focus from preventing gun violence, to surviving gun violence. Campus concealed carry policies inherently emphasize the ‘Fight’ component of the survival model, thus codifying the idea that in order to survive you must have a gun and a willingness to use it. This shifts survival responsibility to the individual, as opposed to mandating protection from, or prevention of, active shooters as the responsibility of the college, state, or national government. The idea that you can

‘win’ a gun fight in many ways assumes you are going to fight back, presumably with a gun of your own. The only alternative to personal responsibility that is offered here is the idea that we should all rely on the good guy with a gun to save us from the inevitable active shooter.

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However, the lone good guy with a gun relies on good luck or being with the right person at the right time, implying that if you yourself are not armed then you are leaving your survival up to a matter of chance. This scenario still assumes that there is no institutional or governmental responsibility to protect you.

Codifying the Individual’s Responsibility to Fight

At the heart of the training on how to survive an active shooter lies the Run, Hide, Fight model of survival. Although this model did not leave me feeling well prepared for survival, the instructor was drawing on prevailing wisdom. The Run, Hide, Fight model is, according to the

Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the most effective method of surviving an active shooter (www.dhs.gov). The ordering of these techniques is not without purpose, it is always recommended that you fight or engage an active shooter only as a measure of last resort for survival. You can download a Run, Hide, Fight pocket card from the DHS website, that emphasizes the ordering of survival techniques and provides an easily accessible format if you find yourself facing an active-shooter and cannot remember what to do. There are multiple videos available on YouTube that provide instruction on how to implement the Run, Hide, Fight model. The model is so common-place, that when Babel (2016) writes about an active shooter that came to her campus, she received an emergency notification system text message that directed “Active shooter on campus. Run, hide, fight” (2016).

Although Run, Hide, Fight, is the prevailing training model, my personal experiences with active shooter survival training highlights the way the implementation of campus concealed carry policies implicitly promotes fight as the central survival technique. The hope that a good guy with a gun will kill the bad guy with a gun is being codified, and with these policies we are moving towards a world in which surviving an active shooter becomes an individual’s

109 responsibility. If you want to be safe, the implementation of campus concealed carry policies implies that you can and should carry a weapon, and that you should use it to protect yourself.

The concealed carry permit training course was equally invested in promoting the idea of self-protection as the best option for individuals. The instructor taught the class explicitly that the police have no responsibility to protect individual citizens, and do not necessarily have a mandate to intervene when a crime is being committed. This was highlighted by the re-telling of

Warren v. District of Columbia (1981) as a means of emphasizing that relying on the police to protect you is foolish. This story, and several others that were used to highlight vulnerability, almost exclusively explained through examples of violence against women. As a woman sitting in the classroom, I felt targeted in that I was being singled out as a potential victim. However, I was also being taught that self-protection would provide me with a level of empowerment unattainable to anybody unwilling to carry a weapon. The instructor and other men in the classroom all assumed I was present in this training due to a desire to protect myself, or that I was in some way taking a stand against becoming a victim. Again, here we see the idea that protection is an individual responsibility. In many ways this is indicative of the neoliberal politics at play in contemporary culture wherein the individual holds more responsibility than the government. The overwhelming theme of the class was that violence can, and will, happen anywhere at any time and although most of the examples highlighted violence against women, the subtext remained the same: you can only be safe if you take personal responsibility by carrying a gun.

Although concealed carry permits have long-been available around the country, the implementation of campus concealed carry policies pushes back against the long-standing tradition of gun-free spaces. This signals that as a culture, we no longer pretend to believe

110 society has a role in stopping the active shooter from coming to campus in the first place. This effectively codifies the idea that surviving gun violence is up to the individual. Given this, it makes sense that a training on how to survive an active shooter, or training to obtain a concealed carry permit, would emphasize an emotionally charged, fear-based curriculum. If people are afraid, they are more likely to accept the idea of fighting.

Constructing Victimhood through Fear-Based Curriculum

Throughout both the active shooter training and the concealed carry permit training, fear was positioned as a central element necessary in understanding the need to survive. Surviving was presented as synonymous with fighting or carrying a concealed weapon. Both trainings used stories, both real-life and hypothetical, to instill fear in participants and ensure we understood how very real the threat to our lives has become. The exhaustive list of school shootings presented during the first half of the active-shooter training left the mood in the room fearful, agitated, and in some cases tearful. Interestingly, this fear was not gendered in such a way as to imply that women were more likely to be victims of gun violence. In fact, this training did the opposite – reinforcing the idea that a mass casualty shooting would be chaotic and random, with all individuals present being equally susceptible to death. Despite this, the concept of fighting the active shooter was constructed as a masculine activity. The use of gendered pronouns made it evident that although the trainer expected women to fight for their lives in an active shooter scenario, he still expected the men on campus to step up and play the role of hero, or the ‘good guy’. When discussing the potential for students practicing concealed carry on campus, he referred to these hypothetical individuals exclusively as male. When explaining how to fight an active shooter in a classroom he referenced the largest men in the room as the most likely to succeed. As a professor of social work, I wondered to myself what I was supposed to do given

111 that most of my students are female, and when it is not uncommon for me to teach classes with no men at all. As a feminist and a Quaker, I wasn’t sure if I should be more offended by the idea that I was incapable of fighting for myself, or the idea that participating in violence was necessary for my own survival.

This framing of victimhood as random was a stark contrast to what I experienced during my concealed carry permit course where the idea of being a victim was constructed as almost entirely feminine. In this class, the instructor shared multiple stories of women being attacked, raped, tortured, or beaten by a strange man. As the narrative illustrates, he started the class with an expansive recounting of Warren v. District of Columbia (1981) which illustrated two things: that women are vulnerable, and that the police have no obligation to protect you from violence.

This illustrated both the way in which victimhood is often culturally framed as exclusively feminine, but also highlighted the need for personal responsibility for one’s safety. The message to the audience was gender dependent. The message to women was that we need to protect ourselves, because the world is not a safe place for us to exist. The message to the men in the room was that they need to be ready to protect their women, and if they are not around to do so, they should encourage the women in their lives to arm themselves. A less explicit message was the racial expectations embedded in the class. The room was almost entirely full of white men – there was only one man of color in the entire class. The racial subtext indicated that white men are expected and encouraged to own guns to protect their women from an existential threat of sexual violence. Anybody who exists in modern-day American culture cannot ignore the racial implications of this argument wherein men of color are assumed to pose a threat to white women. Within this construct, women of color are made invisible, because they are neither worthy of protection from violence nor encouraged to defend themselves. All of this curriculum

112 depended on the participants feeling afraid. Regardless of how violence was gendered the idea of random violence was still used to support the idea that carrying a concealed weapon is the best way to protect yourself from violence.

Lastly, the instructor in Surviving an Active Shooter framed the active shooter scenario as a war-like environment in which one side will win and one side will lose. This reinforced the hyper-masculine ways in which our society talks about guns and gun culture. This is consistent with the small body of the existing literature that examines the role of hegemonic masculinity in gun culture and how guns are used in society to perform or express gendered identities (Carlson,

2015; Stroud, 2012). In this training, both the active shooter and the good guy with a gun were inherently gendered as male. The idea that the good guy will be able to wield a weapon with enough expertise to take out an active shooter assumes that the good guy is able-bodied.

Fulfilling this role would require somebody with healthy eyesight, the cognitive capacity to react with speed and efficiency in identifying and shooting the shooter, and the physical ability to pursue and engage the shooter. Although not explicitly stated, cultural conditioning makes it evident that the good guy with a gun is assumed to be white. In the era of Black Lives Matter and a dominant cultural discourse about the likelihood of black men to be shot by the police, it is understood that men of color would not be safe to pull out a weapon in the event of a mass shooter. They would not be hailed as a good guy with a gun, rather they would be assumed to be the active shooter himself. As a cis-gendered, able-bodied, white woman, this strikes me as both problematic and worthy of investigating further. This is what prompted me to sign up for a concealed carry permit class. It seemed like the best way to fully understand the good guy with a gun was to go out and become one – or at least, a female version of a good guy.

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Ninety-Eight Rounds

It was an anything but ordinary kind of day when I found myself seventeen miles outside of town standing in a secluded farm field with a group of strangers. Courtesy of winter in the

Pacific Northwest, the sun was starting to set—despite it only being 4:00 in the afternoon. The temperature was rapidly dropping, and I knew it would be well below freezing before we were done. I had come prepared, layering two sweatshirts over my t-shirt, and pulling a heavy winter coat on for good measure. I was regretting that despite my thick boots I hadn’t thrown on a pair of wool socks, and my toes were already starting to feel frozen. There wasn’t much time to dwell on the temperature though, because the ad-hoc gun range had been set up and we were ready to

“go hot1”.

The gun range was comprised of several steel targets cut in the shape of an upper torso and large enough that I assume they were meant to represent a male body. They were strategically positioned in front of a man-made dirt hill that would prevent bullets from travelling too far down range. At the other end of the range, four folding tables had been set up on a large Black tarp. Several outdoor lights were being powered by a small generator to ensure we could continue shooting as the sun faded away and darkness set in. Prior to this moment, I had never shot a handgun in my life. I can count on my fingers how many times I have shot a rifle, and most of those happened more than two decades ago at my childhood 4-H camp. Given this history, I was a little intimidated when I learned that to obtain an enhanced concealed carry permit I was required to shoot a handgun 98 times (Legislature of the State of Idaho, 2015). I have so many questions about this number - why not just require participants to shoot an even

1 The term “go hot” at a gun range indicates weapons are loaded and ready to be fired. While the range is hot, individuals should remain behind the fire line and assume all guns are loaded. Alternatively, a range can “go cold” meaning all guns are unloaded, placed on tables, and are not to be handled. When the range goes cold people can walk down range to retrieve targets without fear of being shot.

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100? Did something magical happen after shooting a handgun 98 times? Was this the precise number of triggers pulled to make one proficient? Would shooting a gun 98 times make me feel safe, or empowered, in the presence of a gun? Most importantly, would 98 rounds transform me into what society refers to as a ‘good guy with a gun’?

By the time I hit the gun range, I had already spent the better part of a day with the instructor from the National Firearms Training Association (NFTA). I had taken a four-hour basic concealed carry permit course in the morning and had completed the two hours of classroom time for the enhanced concealed carry permit earlier in the afternoon. Firing a weapon was the only requirement left before I earned the certificate of completion that would allow me to obtain a state issued enhanced concealed carry permit. I was nervous about shooting the weapon, but I wasn’t nervous about hitting the target. I already knew that although there was a requirement to shoot a gun 98 times, there was nothing in the code that said we had to hit the target. In fact, there would be no measurement or record of our accuracy—we simply had to be capable of pointing the gun in the general direction of the target and pulling the trigger (Legislature of the State of Idaho, 2015)2. As it turns out, the second amendment guarantees me the right to bear arms, but there is no accompanying proficiency measurement

2 Section 18-3302K of the Idaho Statutes states the following requirements must be met for any individual taking an enhanced concealed carry permit course: (i) The course instructor is certified by the national rifle association, or by another nationally recognized organization that customarily certifies firearms instructors, as an instructor in personal protection with handguns, or the course instructor is certified by the Idaho peace officers standards and training council as a firearms instructor; (ii) The course is at least eight (8) hours in duration; (iii) The course is taught face to face and not by electronic or other means; and (iv) The course includes instruction in: 1. Idaho law relating to firearms and the use of deadly force, provided that such instruction is delivered by either of the following whose name and credential must appear on the certificate: (A) An active licensed member of the Idaho state bar; or (B) A law enforcement officer who possesses an intermediate or higher Idaho peace officers standards and training certificate. 2. The basic concepts of the safe and responsible use of handguns; 3. Self- defense principles; and 4. Live fire training including the firing of at least ninety-eight (98) rounds by the student.

115 that says I need to know how to use one (Constitution of the United States, 1787). I found myself feeling a little ambivalent about this information. I suspected I might not hit the target at all and didn’t really want to pay the course fee more than once if I could avoid it. However, I was genuinely distressed to learn that getting a permit was so easy. There is a great deal of rhetoric put forth in favor of arming civilians with guns that relies on the belief that people with a concealed carry permit are both law abiding citizens and responsible gun owners. There is an often-cited research study by the Crime Prevention Research Center that comes up time and again as a way of disputing any study or pundit who argues otherwise (Bandler, 2016; Haggerty,

2016; Hawkins, 2017). The study claims concealed carry permit holders are the most law abiding of all citizens (Bandler, 2016) Consistent with the questions that continued to fill my mind as afternoon turned to evening, I wondered: can somebody be a responsible gun owner if they don’t even know how to shoot their weapon accurately? Could I be a responsible gun owner after taking a one-day concealed carry course? Would getting my concealed carry permit automatically turn me into a good guy?

In the farmers field at the ad-hoc gun range, I found out I was one of a very small number of people who didn’t already own a gun. Fortunately, I was able to borrow one from the instructor. He pulled out a large box that had a variety of handguns and asked if I had a preference—I didn’t. So, he gave me a small, black gun that to me looked exactly like every other gun in the box. He also handed me two empty clips and told me to load my ammunition, or ammo. I spent several minutes discreetly trying to figure out exactly how one is supposed to load ammo into a clip before a man approached and asked if I needed help. There was no shortage of help for a “lady” at the range—in fact I felt a little overwhelmed by the amount of positive support the men gave me for taking steps to obtain a concealed carry permit. There was an odd

116 combination of paternalistic support from the elderly men, and an over-eager willingness to help, and flirt, on the part of the younger men. This man had already helped me purchase my ammunition at the gun store prior to visiting the range, and he didn’t seem to mind helping me again. He took a little extra time to teach me how to ascertain how many bullets each clip had the capacity to hold, and casually asked if I wanted to go out for a drink when we were done. It was the first time, and hopefully the last time, I have ever been asked out by a man holding a weapon in his hands.

Pressing bullets into the clip was a lot more difficult than I anticipated, especially because my hands were cold which made it hard to maneuver the spring. While we were busy with this task, the instructor set up a rotation to make sure everybody could shoot the mandated

98 rounds in the most efficient manner possible. When it was my turn, I approached the front of the range with apprehension. The way the range was set up only allowed 2-3 people to shoot at any given time, which meant there was a mostly male, predominantly experienced gun owning audience watching me. I quietly disclosed to the instructor that I had never shot a handgun. I was surprised to find I felt bashful admitting this to him. He was so enthusiastic about guns and gun ownership, and I am a life-long student who always wants to please the people in charge of teaching me. Somehow, admitting to him that I had never shot a handgun made me worry that he would be disappointed with me. Instead, he was kind and encouraging and told me I was doing the right thing by learning how to shoot. I am slightly embarrassed to admit the first time I pulled the trigger the burst of the weapon startled me so much I let out a scream while simultaneously jumping backwards. I have no idea where that first bullet went because I am pretty sure my eyes were shut. Not exactly a great start. I realized I needed to discard at least one layer of clothing, because my coat was pulling on my shoulders and making it difficult for

117 me to hold the gun steady to aim the weapon. After the initial shock and my decision to discard my heavy wool coat, firing the weapon turned out to be quite simple. At first I found the sound of the gun range to be disconcerting. The incessant POP POP POP of gun fire made me feel uneasy, but eventually as I settled into a routine the noises had a meditative effect on me. I found that the rhythm of the popping helped clear my mind and allowed me to tune out the people around me and focus on the weight of the gun and the sight of the target. The targets were made of tin, so every time I hit the target I was rewarded by the pleasant sound of a TING. Once I understood how the weapon was sighted, I hit the target roughly 8 out of every 10 shots I fired.

POP. TING. POP. TING. POP. TING. The cadence became pleasant and made me feel more comfortable at the range. Not that the instructor was paying attention to my accuracy, but I wanted to know. With so many students rotating through the stations, and the rapidity at which one can fire a clip of ammunition, it would have been impossible for the instructor to observe or record how proficient each student was in hitting the target. In total I received about 4 minutes of formal instruction with the instructor on how to handle the gun, shot 98 rounds, and went home with a certificate acknowledging I had completed the requirements to obtain an enhanced concealed carry permit. I was officially on the path to becoming one of the ‘good guys’.

Before I fired 98 rounds from a handgun, I thought I was going to hate it. As a Quaker I am committed to a pacifist lifestyle and my fundamental beliefs about the world don’t allow for the possibility of guns being a good thing. The truth is, I didn’t just like it—I loved it. Firing a handgun did, indeed, make me feel powerful bordering on invincible. There was one point at the gun range when the instructor wanted me to fire more rapidly, so he shouted in my ear that I needed to hurry up because that man (meaning the target) was going to rape me if I didn’t unload my clip into his chest. So, I did. I unloaded 15 rounds of ammunition directly into the

118 target. Without hesitation, and with a smile on my face. It brought me back to all the times in life that I have felt powerless or afraid. It made me wish I had always felt this assertive, this collected, and I legitimately wondered if carrying a concealed weapon would give me this feeling all the time. But then I left the gun range, and I felt more vulnerable than ever. After eight hours of coursework designed to make me feel afraid for my life, designed to lend the impression that the only way to survive in this world is to carry a gun and to be prepared to use it, I pulled into a gas station to fill up my tank and felt painfully paranoid of the people around me, and I felt fearful for my life.

What the Hell Happened at the Gun Range?

For me, sharing this narrative about my time at the gun range is one of the most important pieces of this work. Throughout this dissertation I have often utilized the phrase ‘gun-culture’ but sometimes it can be hard to visualize what this really means. In my mind the gun range is a visual representation of gun culture. It is a specific space dedicated wholly to the firing of weapons for no particular purpose other than to fire weapons or to get better at firing weapons.

Firing a weapon at a gun range is the adult equivalent of playing with a toy or going to a playground with your friends. It is a place for entertainment. A place to congregate with people who have similar hobbies or like-minds. It is a microcosm of social dynamics that exist along lines of gender, race, and economic status. The gun range is gun-culture personified. My time there highlighted several important components of how my gender, race, and economic status operate within gun culture that are ripe for analysis and are discussed at length in this section.

This section will begin with a brief overview of the writing process I undertook to construct this narrative and will end with an in-depth analysis of how this narrative is situated within a macro cultural context. This analysis will examine several emergent themes from this

119 narrative that offer insights into the role of guns in society, gender dynamics within gun culture, and the role of intersectional feminism in deconstructing this space. In this section, I will discuss these themes in detail. I will start by exploring the role of gender at the gun range and examine the influence of hegemonic masculinity on my experiences with sexual objectification. Further, I will examine how the sexual objectification of women contributes to the social construction of women as inherent victims. And lastly, I will explore the ways in which the idea that women are inherent victims fuels the idea that guns are inherently empowering to women. These themes all highlight in various ways how it is possible for an individual to have a nuanced and complicated relationship to guns.

Constructing 98 Rounds

This narrative was carefully written over several weeks with the intention of allowing the reader to imagine themselves at the gun range with me. I wanted the reader to feel my frozen toes and to hear gunfire. It was important to me that the reader be able to visualize the gun range and imagine what it would feel like to be there. When I talk with people about my experience at the gun range, I find they are often surprised by the ad-hoc nature of the set-up. Most people assume that I would have been at an indoor gun range where people shoot at paper targets on retractable wires. They also assume that the gun-range portion of the concealed carry course would include some sort of proficiency measurement where the student is required to demonstrate safety procedures and a certain level of ability with a gun. My narrative disrupts many of these assumptions about the concealed carry permit process and highlights the idea that people with a concealed carry permit should not be assumed to be competent with a gun. After reading this narrative, it should be clear to the reader that I am neither proficient, competent, or even comfortable with guns. The narrative also highlights the informal nature of the concealed

120 carry training process. Readers might be wondering why the gun-range was set up in a farmer’s field seventeen miles outside of town, or why the gun-range was such an informal space. This question seems particularly pressing, given that permanent gun ranges, both indoor and outdoor, do exist. These are the same types of questions that I had throughout the experience.

This narrative focuses on highlighting the ways in which gender shaped my experience at the gun range. I wanted to draw attention to what I was wearing, in part to help the reader visualize the environment, but also in part to highlight the ways in which sexual objectification is unrelated to sexuality. Although I consider myself a traditionally feminine woman, I felt decidedly un-sexual buried inside several layers of thick winter clothing. The sexual objectification I experienced had nothing to do with the way I looked, and everything to do with my age and gender. I also wanted to embed in the narrative the small and subtle ways that gender dynamics played out at the gun range. For this reason, I make mention of several small moments

– a man trying to help me load my clip, an instructor telling me to be afraid of a rapist, the paternalistic approval of my desire to have a concealed carry permit. Each of these moments contributed to the over-all feelings of sexual objectification, and in turn the idea that I was viewed by my classmates as both a potential victim and a potentially empowered woman.

This narrative represents my experience at the gun range while taking an enhanced concealed carry permit class. This story is mine alone and cannot stand in as representative of other women who have existed in similar spaces. However, this story does offer the reader an opportunity to experience what this class might look and feel like through my eyes.

The Relationship Between Inherent Vulnerability and the Empowered Woman

My experience at the gun range illustrates several important facets of the ways in which women are positioned within gun culture. In this section, I will discuss the role of my feminine

121 gender identity in the narrative 98 Rounds and examine the implications for that positionality at the gun range. I will make the argument that women are positioned as inherently vulnerable and analyze the ways in which the sexual objectification of women feeds into this construct.

Additionally, I will explore the relationship between the presumed inherent vulnerability of women and the concept of empowered women. I will explicitly detail how it is impossible to have one without the other within gun culture.

The Inherent Victimhood of Women

I have lived my entire life in a white woman’s body, and I am certainly no stranger to the feeling of being viewed as a sexual object. Despite this, it is almost impossible for me to put into words what it felt like to be a woman occupying space at the gun range. Although there were other women there, I was significantly younger than the others and there was a distinct difference in the way I was treated by the men in attendance. Nobody asked me why I was seeking a concealed carry permit, but several people made comments that assumed I was there because I was concerned about my safety and seeking a measure of self-protection. The elderly men and the instructor expressed approval of my desire to protect myself and treated me like I imagine they would a daughter or granddaughter. The younger men expressed a desire to help me at every opportunity – different men helped me purchase bullets, load my clip, and learn the proper shooting stance. They also expressed approval and were quick to give praise every time I mastered a new skill such as loading a clip. At first glance this might seem like the instructor had simply fostered an environment of mutual support – but that was certainly not how I felt about the attention. The sexual undertones could not be mistaken and although I have been hit on in just about every conceivable manner – this was the first time I had ever experienced men trying to hit on me while they were simultaneously holding loaded weapons. While I was hyper-aware

122 of the presence of guns in these interactions, it was painfully clear to me that they were not. In many ways this is indicative of the ways in which men and women experience violence or threats of violence in different ways. As women we are culturally conditioned to have constant vigilance toward the threat of violence and this scenario was no exception. At the gun range, the men around me were simultaneously treating me like a sexual object and positioning me as a potential victim in need of protection. They treated me with kindness, and romantic interest, while simultaneously assuming that I lived in fear of sexual violence. Their inability to recognize that I might be fearful of them illustrates the way white men with guns often view themselves as the good guy. This also highlights the way sexual objectification of women is necessary for viewing white women as inherent victims of sexual violence. If the good men are sexually interested in a woman, the rationale extends that the bad guy will share that interest. The difference being that the bad guy holds some sort of malicious intention that women need protection from.

As a white, middle-class, cis-gendered, able-bodied white woman, I believe my experience with sexual objectification was likely impacted by the way I presented myself at the gun range. My whiteness combined with my middle-class presentation was interpreted as innocence and granted me the assumption that my reasons for wanting a weapon were reasonable. It as assumed I wanted self-protection as opposed to a weapon to be utilized for malicious purposes. I do not believe a woman of color or a woman who presented as low-income would have been granted the same assumptions. At the range I was met with nothing but support and offers for assistance. It is difficult to know if this was due to my whiteness, my age, or my presentation as a cis-gendered traditionally attractive woman. It was likely a combination of all three, and as such is impossible to understand how my experience would have been different if I presented myself in a different way. However, it is reasonable to assume that given that most

123 men at the range were white, cis-gendered men, that my experience would have been very different had any of those facets of my identity been different.

In this narrative, I also share that the instructor shouted into my ear that I should imagine the target was a rapist who was about to attack me. This moment was profound and significant for a variety of reasons. As a survivor of sexual violence, being told to imagine I am about to be raped was upsetting. There is no way the instructor could have known about my history with sexual violence. However, given the high percentage of women who are victims of sexual assault, I initially felt it was inappropriate that he did not err on the side of caution and assume he might be shouting this into the ear of a survivor. Only later did it occur to me that it is entirely possible that he assumes many of the women who take his class are there because they are survivors. This idea would more closely align to the content of the course where sexual violence against women was presented multiple times as a driving factor in the need for women to practice concealed carry. It is impossible for me to determine why he shouted into my ear that I was about to be raped, but I can say that I was upset by his words. At the same time, I was surprised by my own reaction. Rather than feeling tense or anxious I found that the gun in my hand made me feel safe and secure, and I did not hesitate to empty my clip into the target. When

I thought about a rapist coming for me, he had a face and a name, and I enjoyed the opportunity to shoot him. This moment captures in many ways the very essence of the way gun culture views women as perpetually vulnerable and inevitably victims. I did not hear or observe the instructor asking any of the male students to envision the target as a would-be rapist. This illustrates one of the ways in which gun culture positions women as inherent victims. The assumption that the best way to motivate me to fire a weapon faster was to imply that I am about to be raped assumes that

I am already or always fearful of this possibility. It also assumes that the main reason a woman

124 wants to obtain a concealed carry permit would be to protect herself from the threat of sexual violence. This is one-half of the binary construction of the relationship between white women and guns. If we are always assumed to be potential victims, then obtaining a permit or practicing concealed carry launches us out of the victim category and instead re-imagines these women as empowered.

Throughout this narrative, my position as a white middle-class woman was central to my experience. It is critical to acknowledge that although much of my experience was impacted by my gender, it was simultaneously impacted by my race and other perceived identity markers. I present a cisgender middle-class white woman, and as a result I occupy a sheltered space within gun culture. This space assumes me to be a person with pure intentions, a person who is inherently responsible enough to practice concealed carry, and a person worthy of protection. It is difficult to imagine that a woman of color would have been met with the same level of approval, or the same eagerness to offer help, in a concealed carry class. It is equally difficult to imagine that a woman of color would have been assumed to have pure intentions regarding her desires to carry a concealed weapon. White supremacy marginalizes women of color in a way that they are not assumed to be innocent, while simultaneously creating a social structure in which violence against women of color is socially sanctioned. The sexual attention I received, for example being asked out for a post-gun range drink, was also an experience rooted in my whiteness. My identity as a white woman allowed the men present to feel comfortable casting me in the role of a potential partner and at the same time my whiteness and presumed respectability protected me from hostility when I declined their requests.

Guns as the Empowering Equalizer

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If the dominant narrative asserts that women who carry are empowered, or that guns are the great biological equalizer, I must allow for an honest examination of my own experience with feelings of empowerment in relationship to firing a gun. When I started this dissertation, I never intended to write about my personal experiences with gun violence or sexual violence. Over the years I have allowed this trauma to fade into the background of my psyche, and I can convince myself that the experience held no lasting implications for me. This has long been the narrative I have told myself, and as a result I have disidentified with the idea of being a victim or a survivor.

But then I found myself standing in the middle of a gun range, with a loaded handgun, and an instructor shouting in my ear to imagine a rapist coming after me. My subconscious mind did not hesitate to assign the target a face and a name – the memory of being raped it turns out is just under the surface waiting for an opportunity to emerge. Instinctively I unloaded my entire clip into the target, and I did it with a smile on my face. It didn’t just feel good to shoot the ghost of my rapist, it felt great. I felt empowered, I felt in control, and for a fleeting moment I experienced a mingling of joy and regret. I derived joy from the idea that I could exert this kind of power over my past. I felt regret that I had never experienced this feeling of control in the past. This was the moment I really understood all the rhetoric around the idea that guns can be empowering for women. I wondered, would my experience with sexual violence have been different if I had owned and carried a gun?

One of my goals in doing this research has been to better understand all aspects of the arguments regarding the role of guns in society and/or campus culture. Prior to taking the campus concealed carry courses I was apprehensive – for the most part I was worried about looking like a fool due to my lack of enthusiasm for, or ability to use, guns. It had never actually occurred to me that I might enjoy firing a handgun, or that I would find the experience

126 empowering. Not only did I enjoy it, it is safe to say I loved it and felt incredibly empowered.

However, these feelings of empowerment are problematic in many ways, particularly in that I was only empowered in relationship to being positioned as a victim. When the instructor told me to imagine the target was a man who wanted to rape me, he was merely reinforcing and reiterating the cultural ideology that to be female is to be vulnerable (Hollander, 2001). In some spaces, it simply does not matter who or what you are, if you present yourself as a woman you can always and immediately be reduced to nothing but the sum of your sexual parts. At the gun range, a woman is merely a rape victim in waiting, or an empowered woman who is ready and willing to shoot to kill when her attacker arrives. There does not seem to be anything in the middle. Empowered or not, women are still coded as inherent victims of the world around them.

Even empowered women are only empowered by their ability to avert victimhood, but a woman who shoots her would-be-rapist is still a victim of circumstance.

The implicit gendering of these constructs cannot be ignored. Although I received a great deal of praise and admiration for taking control of my world by practicing concealed carry, it was still assumed that if I were to need a gun, it would be to protect myself from sexual violence.

This was most clearly evidenced by the instructor shouting at me that I needed to shoot the target before the target raped me. This was more subtly reinforced many times throughout the course in the way that women were only talked about as victims and positioned as inherently vulnerable.

Whenever the image of a good guy with a gun was invoked, the good guy was always a man whose job was to protect the women and children from an attacker. The only time that men were positioned as victims was in imagined scenarios of men being attacked by other men in traditionally masculine spaces, such as bars or athletic venues.

Performing Hegemonic Masculinity and the Myth of the Good Guy with a Gun

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If a person has never been to a gun range, it is almost impossible to describe the atmosphere. The pulsating sounds of weapons being fired vibrates through your body and in some ways becomes all-consuming. It clears your mind and allows you to focus on nothing but the weight of the gun and the sight of the target. I understand why visiting the gun range can be an enjoyable activity. It offers an adrenaline rush, feelings of empowerment, and a way to escape from the trivialities of everyday life. Carlson (2015) writes that when white men experience a decline in real or perceived economic opportunity, they become more likely to own a gun or engage in gun culture. After experiencing the gun range for myself, I can completely understand why this is true. What better way to ward off those anxious feelings that accompany economic insecurity than to fire a handgun at a target and enjoy the accompanying feelings of power and purpose. The problem with this is that gun culture seeps into every aspect of life, and if it is your weapon that makes you feel powerful why limit yourself to the gun range?

Hegemonic masculinity requires men to perform a very specific, socially sanctioned and socially constructed version of what it means to be a man (Firestone & Koedt, 1970; Tong &

Botts, 2018). Ownership and use of guns is one way men can perform their masculinity. The men

I met and interacted with during my concealed carry course articulated a variety of reasons why they wanted to practice concealed carry. Most identified self-protection and protection of women and children (both women and children they perceived as belonging to them, and women and children at large) as the main motivating factor for obtaining a permit. Others identified the permit as a way of asserting power and authority in a world where they feel increasingly disenfranchised. However, I almost exclusively interacted with and observed white men at the gun range. Race plays a critical factor in an individual’s relationship to guns. In an earlier section

I discussed the ways in which gun culture assumes that white women have positive intentions for

128 obtaining access to guns. White men with guns are often granted the same assumptions – that they are not inherently dangerous, that their motivation for carrying a weapon is a positive one, and that if they are found in a public space with a weapon, they are unlikely to be harmed as a result. None of these assumptions are extended to people of color and as such a concealed carry class in a rural, predominantly white community, is unlikely to draw a significant number of participants of color. It is likely that people of color are more likely to be subject to implicit bias that assumes people of color are inherently dangerous, and thus would be met with suspicion in a concealed carry permit course. Although proponents of concealed carry often cite the second amendment as granting all people the right to bear arms, the underlying foundation of white supremacy in all things American signals that these rights are only intended for white people.

One significant example of this is the murder of Philando Castile, who was shot and killed by a police officer in 2016 during a routine traffic stop. Castile disclosed to the officer he was a concealed carry permit holder, and that he was practicing concealed carry. The officer deemed this to be a threat and shot and killed Castile in front of his girlfriend and young daughter (Helsel

& Carrero, 2016). Castile neither reached for, nor brandished his weapon, he simply had access to one. It did not matter that he was practicing concealed carry with a permit or that his gun ownership was lawful. This stands in sharp contrast to the way we were instructed to utilize our own concealed carry permits – the instructor of my course explicitly encouraged us to hand over our concealed carry permit alongside our driver’s license in the event of a traffic stop. He instructed us to do this whether we were carrying a weapon or not, after all, having a concealed carry permit in your possession is a way to signal to the police that you have passed a criminal background check. Having a permit indicates you are not a criminal, but rather a responsible gun-owning citizen. This of course was not true for Castile, and his murder highlights the ways

129 in which gun owners of color are assumed to be criminal, while my own experience highlights the ways in which people who are white are given the benefit of positive assumptions.

Part of my intention in taking the concealed carry permit class, and in ultimately obtaining a concealed carry permit, was to better understand what it means to be a ‘Good Guy with a Gun’ by attempting to become one. The concept of the good guy came up many times over the course of this research project and represents a staple of the dominant discourse around the role of guns in society. The good guy was referenced in my class on how to survive an active shooter in the context that we should all hope that a good guy shoots the bad guy before we all get murdered. The good guy was referenced more explicitly during the concealed carry permit course when we were shown a video example of a good guy. The short clip, available on you tube, showed a woman working at a deli counter of a supermarket being attacked with a knife by an ex-husband. The good guy was a shopper who happened to be in the right place at the right time, and heroically leaped over the counter to shoot the bad guy in the head. The clip was effectively a snuff film, as it depicted the murder of a human, but was framed in a way that made the shooter out to simply be a good guy with a gun. The good guy was exclusively referred with a masculine pronoun and depicted as a man. In addition to the assumption that the good guy is a man, there are several additional assumptions embedded into the way the good guy is constructed within gun culture.

A key assumption is that good guy is likely a concealed carry permit holder. Throughout each of the trainings I attended the procurement of a concealed carry permit was held up as the path to becoming a good guy. Obtaining a concealed carry permit and playing the role of the good guy comes with a significant financial cost. Thus, we are assuming that the guy has economic resources to both participate in a concealed carry course and obtain a concealed carry

130 permit. There are fees associated with registering for a concealed carry permit course, and additional fees associated with applying to obtain the permit. Purchasing a hand-gun is an expensive undertaking, in my own experience shopping for a gun the price range started at

$250.00 but could easily grow to several hundred dollars depending on the size and type of handgun a person desires to own. The most basic of holster for carrying a concealed weapon can be purchased for $25.00. The instructor in my concealed carry course indicated that a basic stick holster was adequate, but not desirable and referred me to The Well-Armed Woman, a website that features a variety of options for practicing concealed carry. Some of the most interesting concealed carry holster options were the concealed carry corset for $99 and the concealed carry leggings for $89 (https://thewellarmedwoman.com/product-category/holsters/). Both products target women and offer to enhance not only your feelings of self-protection, but also to enhance her figure! The concealed carry corset is made of compression fabric and boasts that it will shape your body and allow you to conceal a weapon. Practicing concealed carry in a legal and safe way, as we assume a ‘good guy’ will do, comes with a hefty price tag and as such implies that the good guy has a certain level of economic resources. Of course, there doesn’t appear to be a masculine alternative to the Well-Armed Woman, but I imagine that the cost of practicing concealed carry is slightly higher for women when the expectation is that our concealed carry gear will be more stylish and elaborate than a simple hip holster. Regardless, the good guy is assumed to be a man with economic resources at his disposal.

The idea that the good guy with a gun has the physical ability to pursue, engage, and ultimately defeat an active shooter in a gun fight implies that the good guy is physically able- bodied and intellectually abled. It would require a high level of cognitive capabilities in order for the good guy to identify who the active shooter is and shoot him without inadvertently injuring

131 or killing any innocent bystanders. This implies that the active shooter is not intellectually disabled.

The implication that the good guy will be a white man is slightly harder to understand, it is not necessarily implicit in way we talk about the good guy, rather it is something we know intuitively by existing in a white supremacist society. When one imagines the good guy leaping out of the crowd and chasing down the active shooter, it is hard to imagine that a person of color would or could do this without being presumed to be the bad guy and shot by responding police officers. The way in which people of color are assumed to be criminals makes it difficult to imagine they would be safe, or willing, to fulfill the role of the good guy. I return to the example of Philando Castile, who was not even in the presence of an active shooter but was still considered armed and dangerous for attempting to concealed carry and the presence of a passive weapon resulted in his murder.

Conclusion

Several key components of my identity played into the way I was treated at the gun range. As a white woman, I was given an absolute pass regarding my desire to have a concealed carry permit. Everybody I encountered assumed my intentions were pure, nobody questioned my right to obtain a concealed carry permit, and I had no difficulty getting the instructor to sign off on my participation in the event. This is an example of the ways in which white privilege can impact the experiences of white women. My perceived age had a distinct relationship to the way

I was treated, primarily by the men in attendance. My economic and able-bodied privileges also had a significant impact on my experience. Without financial resources, I would not have been able to take the class as the cost of registration, and the cost of purchasing ninety-eight bullets, was not insignificant. Without an able-body it would have been significantly more difficult to

132 access the gun-range, which was located in the middle of a farmer’s field without any form of accessibility accommodations.

As I was driving home from the gun range, I realized I was shaking – it is hard to say if this was caused by the freezing cold temperatures, the process of coming down from an adrenaline high, or the complete overwhelming paranoia I was experiencing. Likely it was a combination of all three. It took me several weeks and multiple drafts of writing to fully process my thoughts. Ultimately, I came away with a few things I would like to share. First – proponents of gun control should not discount the amount of fear and paranoia being experienced by many gun enthusiasts. The coursework I took to obtain a concealed carry permit was absolutely designed to make the students feel afraid. Multiple stories of unarmed women being raped or attacked were shared to make women in the group feel vulnerable. I believe these stories were also told to make the men feel angry and protective of ‘their’ women. It is impossible to sit through a course like this and not draw comparisons to the Jim Crow era where protection of white women served as a smoke screen for the mass murder of Black men and the terror inflicted on Black communities. At some point in the research process, I found myself feeling less and less safe, the paranoia and fear started to seep into my subconscious. I started to feel afraid in public spaces and started to think about exist strategies if I were to suddenly find myself in the midst of an active shooter. This highlighted for me the rationale behind using fear as a strategy for increasing gun ownership and use – it is effective. Just like we saw in the Jim Crow era, propaganda in films such as The Birth of a Nation stoked fear and outrage about the idea of

Black men assaulting white women and was then used as justification for violence against communities of color. In contemporary gun culture, very little has changed. White men with guns are still assumed to be inherent good guys, and black men with guns are still portrayed as

133 inherently threatening. Gun ownership has been offered up to white Americans as the be all end all answer and the traditional American ideal of individual accountability has been exploited to convince us that the safety and security of our families is up to us, and us alone.

In the end, I shot ninety-eight rounds at an ad-hoc gun range in a middle-of-nowhere. The experience was simultaneously terrifying and exhilarating. This narrative is indicative of the very complicated relationship that can exist between women and gun culture. Was I empowered?

Perhaps, momentarily. Did the class prepare me to be a responsible gun-owning citizen?

Absolutely not.

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CHAPTER SIX: CONCLUSION

Towards the end of writing this dissertation, I found myself for a second time at my children’s school during an active shooter drill. This time there was a new principal in charge, and I was not invited to observe. Instead she informed me that all visitors would need to shelter in place alongside the front-office staff. We were placed in a small conference room behind the front office. Staff covered the window in the door with a piece of paper that has been pre-cut and taped onto the back of the door waiting for such an occasion. There was another mom sitting with me, an acquaintance from the Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) who has two children at the school. It was her first time witnessing an active-shooter drill, and she confided that she hadn’t even been aware this was happening at the school. She stifled sobs throughout the entire drill, saddened by the fact that active shooter drills have been deemed a necessary component of the American education system. I wanted to offer some words of comfort – but what kind of comfort can reasonably be given in this situation? Instead I found myself awkwardly pretending not to notice she was crying while simultaneously trying to manage my own anxiety about the situation.

Sitting through this active shooter drill seemed indicative of my experience studying guns and gun culture. You simply cannot escape the reality: the threat of gun violence has seeped so deeply into the core of American culture that it cannot be avoided. An early morning visit to volunteer at my children’s school is something I look forward to all week – but twice has ended in an observation of an active-shooter drill. Turning on the television, literally any day of the year, can bring news reports of another mass shooting in an American church, classroom, movie theater, or campus.

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It is this environment where concealed carry policies affecting college campuses and students nation-wide becomes a topic worthy of significant investigation. The work presented here interrogates my personal experiences as a woman immersed in gun culture and situates my experiences within a broader cultural context. This work has significantly and irrevocably shifted the way I think about the role of guns on campus, and the role of guns as part of American culture. Becoming an active participant in gun culture exposed feelings of both vulnerability and empowerment that I did not anticipate. My experiences yielded a variety of opportunities to critically engage in deconstructing the presence of guns in society in order to better understand how I have been impacted by them.

In this chapter I will review key findings from my research study, outline the limitations of the scope of the study, and discuss my plans for future research. I will also briefly discuss the work that is not presented here, as this dissertation highlights certain narratives from my field work but does not represent all my experiences. I would like to offer additional insight into the experiences that I chose to represent, as well as highlight those I did not. In this chapter I will review briefly each of the key findings presented in chapter four and discuss next steps and follow-up questions in relationship to these findings.

Over-view of Findings and Highlight Key Points from Findings

Chapter five of this dissertation showcases four narratives that explore my lived experiences interacting with campus concealed carry and immersing myself into the broader culture of guns. In this section I will briefly review the major findings outlined in chapter five and connect these key findings to the need for future research.

The first narrative presented in chapter five, Armed with More than Knowledge, invited the reader into my classroom to experience my first interaction with the idea of guns on campus.

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The first significant discussion point presented after this narrative is an exploration of the ways in which the presence of guns in the classroom might impact or shape social constructions of power dynamics within the classroom setting. This narrative highlights the ways in which the threat of guns, or the implied presence of guns, was enough to shift the balance of power between professor and student, but also shift the balance of power between the students involved.

It was the implied presence of guns that contributed to female students of color feeling they were unable to confront racism on the part of their peers without facing the threat of violence. This calls into question the dominant discourse that positions gun violence as ‘active’ – as seen in the frequent use of the language “active shooter.” Gun culture can also be passive – it can be the implied presence of guns, or the threat of guns being introduced into a situation, that can re- shape an interaction or environment. The actual gun is not necessarily required.

The second section of chapter five presents two narratives side by side. The first,

Surviving an Active Shooter introduces the reader to my experience in a training aimed at teaching people how to survive in the event of an active shooter. This training was offered on the campus where I work and was sponsored by the nursing division. The narrative presents my experience in the training and highlights several key components of gun culture including the idea that it is an individual’s responsibility to survive in the event of a mass shooting. The analysis of this narrative explores further this idea r and examines the ways in which campus concealed carry policies effectively codify this ideology. The narrative also discusses how the training heavily promoted the cultural construct of relying on a ‘good guy with a gun’ to save you in the event of a mass shooting. The good guy is often coded language for a person with a concealed carry permit, who will hopefully be practicing concealed carry in the event and be present in the event of a mass shooting. Analysis of the way in which we have socially

137 constructed the good guy with the gun examines the ways in which the good guy is implied to be a white, able-bodied, middle-class, man while simultaneously deconstructing why this prototype is problematic and seeped in white supremacist capitalist patriarchy (hooks, 1984). It was this emphasis on the good guy in the first training that compelled me to take the steps necessary to obtain a concealed carry permit, and the details of this experience are presented in both section two and three. The third narrative, Ghost Stories, is presented alongside Armed with More than

Knowledge. Ghost Stories narrates a piece of my experience taking a full day concealed carry permit training. These two stories both highlight how gun culture places survival for responsibility on the individual, and both explore how fear-based curriculum is utilized to socially construct victimhood or victims as female or feminine.

The final story, 98 Rounds, highlights my experience shooting ninety-eight rounds of ammunition from a handgun in order to complete the requirements to obtain an enhanced concealed carry permit. I use this narrative to explore the role of gender at the gun range and examine the influence of hegemonic masculinity on my experiences being treated as a desirable sexual object by men at the range. I connect the ways in which the sexual objectification of women contributes to the social construction of women as inherent victims. And lastly, I discuss the socially constructed narrative that women are inherent victims fuels the idea that guns can be inherently empowering to women. Surprising even myself, I also discuss in this section the ways in which I felt personally empowered by firing a weapon at the gun range. Immediately following this discussion, I break down how my feelings of empowerment were ultimately driven by the way I had been framed as a potential or perpetual victim, leaving my feelings of empowerment fleeting and problematic. These themes all highlight in various ways how it is possible for an individual to have a nuanced and complicated relationship to guns.

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Scope of Study

To provide an opportunity for critical engagement with the topic of gun culture, in this study the reader is presented with a series of narratives that describe my personal lived experiences as an active participant in gun culture through my interactions with campus concealed carry and obtaining a concealed carry permit. Although each narrative is indicative of and influenced by broader cultural constructs embedded in gun culture, this does not make my experiences representative of all female faculty at institutions where concealed carry is legal. All individuals will experience the implementation of campus concealed carry in a unique way, filtered through their beliefs about and experiences with guns, violence, and other pertinent cultural factors. At the same time, there are some underlying commonalities in the way that women are positioned within gun culture that may contribute to common or shared experiences.

My personal identity as a cis-gendered white woman with economic security, an able-body, and a faculty teaching position, all contribute to the unique ways in which I experienced immersion in gun culture.

As a middle-class white, able-bodied, cis-gendered woman with no criminal record I found myself occupying a position of privilege within gun culture that allowed me to thoroughly explore campus concealed carry. I received almost exclusively encouragement and praise for taking a concealed carry course and obtaining a concealed carry permit. Had I opted to purchase a gun and practice concealed carry, I do not believe I would have faced any significant backlash for the decision. It is unlikely that carrying a gun would have put me at risk of being shot or killed by other gun carriers, or the police. My whiteness shielded me from negative feedback and eliminated any concern that I could be putting myself in danger by choosing to carry. This is a privilege denied to entire groups of people, including people of color and people from low-

139 income neighborhoods. It would be more difficult, and potentially dangerous, for individuals from these groups to try and replicate this study. To highlight this point, I have used the example of Philando Castille who was shot seven times by an officer after disclosing his concealed weapon, for which he had a permit (Helsel & Carrero, 2016). Castille’s girlfriend live streamed the encounter via Facebook and the world watched in horror as Castille was murdered in front of his girlfriend and four-year-old daughter. Concealed carry permits give us permission to have weapons only in theory. In practice the right to concealed carry is primarily intended for and extended to middle and upper middle-class white communities. I want to reiterate that although this work explores my personal experiences and my experiences are valid, it was my positions of privilege made it possible for me to engage in this work safely and with unquestioned access to gun-friendly spaces and social groups.

A Story Left Untold

When I initially pitched this research study to my dissertation committee, I told them I intended to participate in a concealed carry permit class, obtain a concealed carry permit, and then practice concealed carry on campus. This struck me as the way to most thoroughly understand the nature of campus concealed carry and the culture of guns on campus. However, as the research study was underway, and I was immersing myself further into gun culture, I started to have second thoughts about practicing concealed carry. I began to grow increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of practicing concealed carry, and the idea loomed over my work in a way that was decidedly uncomfortable. My husband and I spoke at length about the decision, and for the first time in our relationship, he was not supportive of my plans. He expressed concerns about introducing a handgun into our home where we have three young children. We discussed at length what it would mean for my Quaker practice of pacifism to start carrying a

140 concealed weapon. Ultimately, he suggested that I spend additional time at the gun range practicing how to handle and care for a weapon, and he asked if he could be involved. My husband grew up in a hunting family and compared to myself, he has a significant amount of experience handling weapons. Although this was outside the normal dynamics of our relationship, ultimately, I had to agree with him. His request that I engage in additional training and practice was not unreasonable. The amount of training I had received in my concealed permit course had not prepared me to own or use a weapon. I also saw the gun range as an additional opportunity to engage in gun culture by replicating the behavior of and interacting with gun enthusiasts. I felt strongly that the experience of practicing concealed carry was critical to understanding the implications of campus concealed carry policies and would represent the final step in my attempt to become a good guy with a gun.

In preparation for practicing concealed carry I obtained a state issued concealed carry permit in January of 2018. I started shopping for a hand gun and spent a significant amount of time at gun counters in sporting goods stores talking about weapons. Less than one month later the shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School happened (Chuck, Johnson, & Siemazsko, 2018).

Although this wasn’t the first school shooting of the year, and certainly didn’t end up being the last, it did significantly and rapidly change the national discourse around guns and gun violence.

In the wake of the death of 17 students, the survivors from the massacre began a nation-wide campaign to end gun violence at institutions of education. Their message was loud and clear: they demanded that the government enact comprehensive gun control legislation to stop the rising number of school shootings (Chokey, 2018). The students did not want to increase access to guns as many of their elected officials were advocating for, and they certainly didn’t support the idea of arming their teachers. I watched in awe as the youth of our country organized a

141 nation-wide protest. They used the tools of modern-day activism, including social media and the creation of the #NeverAgain hashtag, to pressure large companies into changing their internal policies on the sale of assault style weapons (Chokey, 2018). They effectively pressured some into discontinuing the sale of weapons completely (Creswell, 2018). The children of America took control and began doing what we, the adults, had failed to do by taking steps to keep our children safe. In the light of these changes I ultimately decided that practicing concealed carry would require me to ignore the message coming from these young activists – some of whom could very well be sitting in one of my classes as early as the following semester. I never followed through with purchasing a handgun or practicing concealed carry on campus. In some ways this made me feel the research was incomplete. In another way, my decision to abstain from practicing concealed carry has had as profound of an influence on my experience as the act of practicing concealed carry might have had. My decision to refuse participation in this aspect of gun culture became a significant part of the way in which I came to understand the role of guns in society and academic spaces.

In addition to my decision not to practice concealed carry, there are other components of my field work that did not make it into the final draft of my dissertation. I wrote several short narratives about experiences that are not presented here. Among these un-told stories are narratives about my experience visiting the police station to acquire a concealed carry permit, taking my family to a gun-show at a local fairgrounds, observing a guns-on-campus debate at a local college, and additional narratives that were drafted about my time spent in a concealed carry permit course. All of these narratives, in my estimation, are compelling stories that highlight a great deal about different aspects of gun culture. However, they were left out of this work for purposes of time and space. Ultimately, the narratives presented here provided the best

142 representation of my over-all experience with the research and simultaneously provided opportunities for situating my experiences within the broader culture of guns in America.

Implications for Future Research

One of the most significant insights that I took away from this research project is a sense of urgency about the need to better understand the role of guns in society. The proliferation of campus concealed carry policies, the push to eliminate gun-free spaces, the increase in proposed legislation that puts armed teachers or other personnel into public schools, and the general sense of discord about how best to handle the epidemic of mass shootings, all speak to the need for a better understanding about the role of guns in our society. This topic clearly needs to be studied from multiple perspectives, but as an academic I am alarmed by the lack of information available regarding the implications of implementing campus concealed carry policies. This study explores my personal experiences teaching on a campus where concealed carry is legal and investigates my experience trying to embody the socially sanctioned construct of the good guy with a gun. I believe further research is required to fully understand the social dynamics and cultural implications of guns on campus. Future research questions might include: how many students are choosing to carry concealed weapons at institutions where it is legal to do so? Why do students choose to practice concealed carry? How do concealed carry policies shape the student/faculty relationship? How does campus concealed carry influence campus culture? Does the presence of guns in a classroom diminish learning opportunities for students? These are all questions that could, and should, be asked about the way that campus concealed carry policies are influencing the world of higher education.

As a parent, I am interested in further exploring the active shooter drills that are taking place in elementary, middle, and high schools across the country. While I was working on this

143 research project, I happened to visit my own kids’ school twice while they were practicing what to do in the event of an active shooter. I have a lot of questions about the efficacy of these drills, as well as questions about the long-term implications for our children’s mental and emotional well-being. Active shooter drills in public schools are a powerful example of how our society has accepted the inevitability of mass shootings and highlights how we are primarily focused on survival as opposed to prevention. This is another area ripe for further exploration.

Although there are many opportunities for future research on this topic, my next identified step is a quantitative research study asking students to identify whether they practice concealed carry, and if so, why do they practice concealed carry. I hope to create a better understanding of how and why students make the decision to carry. I think this is a foundational question that is necessary for helping us understand the culture of concealed carry, particularly on college campuses.

Final Thoughts

Recently, during a democratic debate, presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg said “I was part of the first generation that saw school shootings. We have now produced the second school shooting generation in this country. We dare not allow there to be a third” (Corasaniti, 2019)

This is both a powerful condemnation of the way we have allowed gun violence to flourish, and an important call to action. Buttigieg and I were born the same year. We belong to the same generation – those who were still in school when the mass shooting at Columbine happened. We are a small group sandwiched between the rest of the population who either grew up in the Pre-

Columbine era, or the Post-Columbine era. Perhaps we are invested in this issue because we understand school shootings from multiple perspectives. My same aged peers can remember going to school in a world where school shootings did not exist, but we can also remember a

144 specific moment in time when that changed. We were still in school long enough after

Columbine happened to see the implementation of locked classroom doors, increased security and in many cases security guards, and even the beginning of active shooter drills. Those who grew up before us never experienced school as a place where mass murder happens. Those who came after us have never known a world without school shootings. That we are now raising a third generation of Americans who live with the everyday threat of mass murder at institutions of education should alarm us – as this is indicative of a significant shift in our culture. Ultimately this work represents my attempt to better understand what it means to have guns on campus, but the work led me to explore in depth my relationship to guns in society. My hope is that in reading this work, individuals will be compelled to think critically about their own relationship to guns and consider their own beliefs about the presence of guns on campus. The increasing rate of mass shootings in public spaces, and the wide-spread acceptance of the idea that our culture must accept the inevitability of these shootings happening, speaks to the urgency of the situation.

It is no longer viable for academics, even in non-concealed carry states, to remain neutral on this topic. It has become a topic central to our pedagogical practices and in order to manage our classrooms effectively we must understand how the potential of a mass shooting, or the potential presence of students practicing concealed carry, is shaping our classroom and campus dynamics.

As I am writing the conclusion of this work, the United States experienced two major mass shootings in public spaces in a time frame of less than 24 hours. The first happened at a

Wal-Mart in El Paso, Texas where a gunman reportedly travelled ten hours by car with the explicit intention of murdering people of Mexican descent. A manifesto was published online by the murderer shortly before the attack, claiming that he was doing this to stop the invasion of

Mexican immigrants coming across the American border. He murdered twenty people, and

145 injured twenty-six more (Romero, Fernandez, & Padilla, 2019). I started this research when

President Obama was in office, and I have watched in shock as the country has transitioned to the era of President Trump. The research has been clear; gun ownership among white men increases as economic opportunity declines (Carlson, 2015). Guns are often used as a method of performing and enacting patriarchy and white supremacy (Bankston et al, 1990; Hollander, 2001;

Stroud, 2012, Carlson, 2015; Johnson, 2017). Given the inflammatory rhetoric used by President

Trump (Trump, 2016; Merica & Klein, 2018) that targets communities of color, women, and most often immigrants, I am not surprised that we are seeing both an increase in the pace and lethality of mass murders that target these populations. Although this work started as exploration of my experience with campus concealed carry policies, it is impossible to understand the implications of guns on campus without taking into consideration the broader social context of what is happening in America right now. As I prepare to head back to campus for another semester of teaching, I cannot help but reflect on my position of privilege as a white woman who experiences an assumption of belonging in my country, my community, and within the ivory tower of higher education. Many of my students do not experience these assumptions, and I have several students who have already contacted me with concerns about their ethnicity or immigration status and how it might affect their ability to return to campus. I am aware, and my students are aware, there is a very real danger inherent in a space that does not assume they belong, coupled with a space where guns are accessible, encouraged, and legal.

It is astonishing to consider that when I started working on this dissertation, so many of the murders discussed here (and others that have been left out of this work), had not happened yet. Attempting to publish a work that encompasses all major mass murders and is up-to-date on the national discourse around the role of guns in society has always been an impossibility.

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However, that is not to say that I am without hope that there is a possibility for a brighter future.

It is true that over the course of this work I have watched mass shootings occur at institutions of education, churches, concerts, and every other public space one can imagine. But I have also watched as the national conversation has shifted before my very eyes. In the wake of the murders at Stoneman Douglas High School, the national conversation started to change. The youth of

America stood up to the government and began to demand action – and they used the tools readily available to the millennial generation to create a social media campaign that produced unparalleled results. They organized a national school walk-out, they applied economic pressure to national chain stores that resulted in at least one major retailer pulling guns from their shelves; the survivor-activists became household names (Chokey, 2018; Creswell, 2018; Gray, 2018).

These are the very students now entering our college classrooms, and I fully expect that the dominant discourse around the role of guns in college classrooms will start to change as well. It is imperative that we better understand the role of guns on campus. The more we can arm ourselves with knowledge about the implications of campus concealed carry on campus culture and classroom learning, the better prepared we can be to engage in this conversation.

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